Service interface for event data store

ABSTRACT

A processing device receives a query from a service, the query comprising a first field value, a time period and a content request. The processing device performs a first search of a data store using the first field value to identify a plurality of events having the time period and at least one field that comprises the first field value and determines a first subset of the plurality of events associated with a first context definition. The processing device determines a plurality of fields specified in the first context definition and further determines, for events in the first subset, field values of one or more fields specified in the first context definition. The processing device determines, from the field values of the one or more fields specified in the first context definition, content that satisfies the content request and generates a response to the query that comprises the content.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This patent application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) ofU.S. Provisional Application No. 62/120,871, filed Feb. 25, 2015, whichis herein incorporated by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

Embodiments of the present invention relate, in general, to the fieldsof security information management (SIM) and security event management(SEM), and more particularly to a system that stores and searches eventsusing contextual information.

BACKGROUND

A defensible cyber security posture for a party may mean that the partyhas deployed systems designed to detect and respond to threats. Thereare numerous types of systems including those within categories such asfirewalls, intrusion detection systems, antivirus systems, malwareprotection systems, and threat reputation systems. When these systemsdetect a potential security issue, an alert or alarm is generated tocall attention from an operator.

A large number of alerts are typically generated because very largenumbers of generic and targeted attacks affect enterprises. Oftentimesso many alerts are generated that operators cannot keep up with thenumber of alerts. For well-tuned, high investment environments, anenterprise may see an average of 500 alerts per week. Other enterprisesmay see around 5000 alerts per week across all security systems of thoseenterprises.

An average alert response typically requires a minimum of 1 hour withsome requiring much more time depending on complexity. An average fulltime security analyst may process 15-20 alerts per week. The gap betweenhow many alerts security systems generate and how many a customer canprocess is large, and growing. Those unprocessed alerts representheightened risk to the enterprises.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention is illustrated by way of example, and not by wayof limitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which likereferences indicate similar elements. It should be noted that differentreferences to “an” or “one” embodiment in this disclosure are notnecessarily to the same embodiment, and such references mean at leastone.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram depicting an example network architecture foran event context management system.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a listener of an event context managementsystem.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an indexer of an event context managementsystem.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a user interface and a service interface ofan event context management system.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of sample configuration data for an eventcontext management system.

FIG. 6 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method of storing a rawdata stream of log data into a data store.

FIG. 7 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method of generating acorrected data stream from a raw data stream and storing the correcteddata stream in a data store.

FIG. 8 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method of generatingevents from discrete log entries in a first data store and storing theevents in a second data store.

FIG. 9 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method of storing contextdefinitions in configuration data for an event context managementsystem.

FIG. 10 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method of performing arecursive search of events in a data store based on fields defined inone or more context definitions.

FIG. 11 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method of searchingevents in a data store based on fields specified in a contextdefinition.

FIGS. 12A-12B together show a flow chart of one embodiment for a methodof performing a search of events in a data store based on fieldsspecified in context definitions.

FIG. 13 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method of aggregatingevent context information.

FIG. 14 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method of searching forcontent that satisfies a content request in a query from a service.

FIG. 15 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method of determiningcontent that is responsive to a content request in a query from aservice.

FIG. 16 illustrates a block diagram of one embodiment of a computingdevice.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

Embodiments are directed to an event context management system (ECMS).The ECMS may receive streams of log data (e.g., device logs andapplication logs) from many sources, convert log entries from the logdata into events, and store the events in an event data store based onfields specified in source type definitions (also referred to hereinsimply as source types). Each event represents a particular log entry.The events that are stored in the data store may be based on log entriesfrom various sources and may have different formats. Examples of logentries include simple network management protocol (SNMP) logs, reportsfrom devices and/or applications running on devices, applicationprogramming interface (API) call records, information exchangeprotocols, remote authentication dial-in user service (RADIUS) logs,lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) logs, security assertionmarkup language (SAML) messages, and so forth. These diverse events mayall be stored and indexed in the event data store, which may be anon-homogenous database, in a manner that enables the events to besearched and linked together. Log entries may or may not be formattedusing the Syslog message transport format. At any time contextdefinitions may be modified in configuration data for the ECMS, whichmay modify how events are linked during searches. Thus, the linksbetween events are not tied to a schema of the event data store inembodiments.

In embodiments, the ECMS receives multiple raw data streams, where eachraw data stream contains messages including log data from a differentdata source. The ECMS system writes each raw data stream to a differentraw data stream record in a first data store, which may be a data lake.For each raw data stream record, the ECMS determines a log format of logdata in that raw data stream record. The ECMS uses the determined logformat to determine boundaries of discrete log entries included in themessages from a raw data stream record and separates the messages intothe discrete log entries to generate a corrected data stream. The ECMSmay then write the corrected data stream to a corrected data streamrecord in the first data store.

Note that embodiments herein are described in relation to a raw datastream. The term “raw data stream” is used to refer to a data streamthat contains “raw log data”. The term “raw log data” is used to referto log data that has not yet been prepared or organized for thegeneration of events and that contains an unknown number of partialand/or complete log entries. The raw log data may or may not beoriginally formatted data. Accordingly, the data stream referred to as a“raw” data stream may or may not contain actual originally formatteddata. In some instances, a sender of the raw data stream may perform oneor more operations on the raw data stream prior to sending it to causethe raw data stream to not have a perfect representation of an originalformat. Accordingly, a raw data stream may have contents that have notyet been modified or have been minimally modified by the ECMS.

In embodiments, the ECMS reads the discrete log entries from thecorrected data stream record in the first data store. The ECMS thengenerates an event for each discrete log entry. To generate an event theECMS may parse the discrete log entry based on the first log format toidentify fields of the discrete log entry. To generate the event theECMS may further identify a subset of the fields to be used as keys forindexing events in a second data store (e.g., in an event database), andassign a field type to each field in the subset of the fields. The ECMSmay then write multiple event entries for the event into the second datastore, wherein a separate event entry is written to the second datastore for each field of the subset of the fields having an assignedfield type. Different events may have different fields that are assignedfield types. Accordingly, different events may be written to the seconddata store using different fields and field values as indexes. This maycause the data store to be a non-homogenous data store in whichdifferent index keys are used for different events.

Once events have been written to the second data store, the ECMS mayreceive a query (also referred to herein as a request) that includes afirst field value and a time period. In some embodiments, the ECMSperforms a first search of the second data store using the first fieldvalue to identify a first plurality of events having the time period andat least one field that comprises the first field value. The ECMS thendetermines, for a first event of the plurality of events, a second fieldvalue of a second field that is specified in a first context definition,the second field having an assigned field type. The ECMS performs asecond search of the second data store using the additional field valueto identify a second plurality of events having the time period and theadditional field value. The second search is performed without receivinga second query. This process may be repeated for each event included inthe first plurality of events. The ECMS then aggregates information fromthe first plurality of events and each of the additional plurality ofevents and generates a response that includes the aggregatedinformation.

For each event that is discovered in the first search, the ECMS is ableto identify fields that are relevant to an event context for that event.These fields may be specified as link keys in a context definition. TheECMS then determines one or more additional searches to runautomatically using the field values of these identified fields.Aggregation of the information from the first search and the additionalsearches then provides a much fuller event context that may enable auser or service to make decisions about potential security threats,alerts, anomalies, and so forth.

In some embodiments, the ECMS receives a query including a first fieldvalue and a time period. The query may be received from a user via auser interface or from a third party service. The ECMS performs a firstsearch of a data store using the first field value to identify aplurality of events having the time period and at least one field thathas the first field value. The ECMS determines a first subset of theplurality of events associated with a first context definition. The ECMSdetermines fields specified in the first context definition. The ECMSthen determines, for events in the first subset, field values of one ormore fields specified in the first context definition. The ECMS may alsoperform additional searches of the data store using the field values ofthe one or more fields specified in the first context definition toidentify additional events. Additionally, the ECMS may determineadditional subsets of the plurality of events associated with othercontext definitions, and may determine field values of events in theadditional subsets specified in the other context definitions.Additional searches may also be performed using the field values of theevents in the additional subsets specified in the other contextdefinitions. In one embodiment, the ECMS determines an event context foreach event based on the field values and context definitions associatedwith those events. The ECMS generates a report based on the field valuesof the one or more fields specified in context definitions and/or basedon the event contexts. In one embodiment, the ECMS generates a differentreport section for each context type. The ECMS then generates a responsethat includes at least a portion of the report and outputs the response.

The reports generated in embodiments provide consolidated informationthat may have been gathered from thousands of disparate events. Thereports may be divided into separate sections based on context typessuch as a network context type, an endpoint context type, a threatcontext type, an identity context type, an identity context type, anapplication context type, a data context type, and so on. Each sectionmay include summaries of the event contexts of events associated with aparticular context type. The summaries may include aggregated data thatcombines identical or similar event contexts and further include countsof such. The summaries may, for example, identify a number of eventcontexts, most common event contexts, most relevant event contexts,and/or other useful information. Contexts derived from events fromdisparate data sources may also be combined and included in thesummaries. From the report, a user may select any of the event contextsto access original log entries associated with the event contexts. Theselog entries may have many different formats, and may have originalformats that may be familiar to analysts who are investigating adetected problem.

In some embodiments, the ECMS receives a query from a service, the queryincluding a first field value, a time period and a content request. TheECMS performs a first search of a data store using the first field valueto identify a plurality of events having the time period and at leastone field that has the first field value. The ECMS determines a firstsubset of the plurality of events associated with a first contextdefinition. The ECMS determines fields specified in the first contextdefinition. The ECMS then determines, for events in the first subset,field values of one or more fields specified in the first contextdefinition. The ECMS may also perform additional searches of the datastore using the field values of the one or more fields specified in thefirst context definition to identify additional events. Additionally,the ECMS may determine additional subsets of the plurality of eventsassociated with other context definitions, and may determine fieldvalues of events in the additional subsets specified in the othercontext definitions. Additional searches may also be performed using thefield values of the events in the additional subsets specified in theother context definitions. In one embodiment, the ECMS determines anevent context for each event based on the field values and contextdefinitions associated with those events. The event contexts may then beaggregated. The ECMS determines, from the determined field values and/orevent contexts, content that satisfies the content request. The ECMSthen generates a response to the query that comprises the content andsends the response to the service.

Security information and event management systems (SIEMs) gather andanalyze a large number of security events, and determine which of thosesecurity events may be important. SIEMs then generate ordered lists ofsuch security events known as burn down lists. However, the SIEMs arenot generally able to determine event context associated with thepotentially important events. Such event context can be useful indetermining whether particular security events should be included in theburn down lists. Embodiments enable third party services such as SIEMsto query the ECMS to ask for particular event context information. TheECMS can then determine the requested event context information andprovide it to the SIEM to enable the SIEM to better determine whichsecurity events to include in the burn down list. SIEMs also performmany different types of correlation between events, and the eventcontext information could be used as an input for any of those types ofcorrelation to improve the correlation. Moreover, embodiments enable thesecurity events included in the burn down list to be listed along withevent context information.

Referring now to the figures, FIG. 1 is a block diagram depicting anexample distributed network architecture 100 for an event contextmanagement system (ECMS) 102, in accordance with some embodiments. TheECMS 102 in one embodiment includes multiple computing devices 115, 125,145, 155, 170, each of which executes different components of the ECMS102. One or more computing devices 115 include instances of a listener120. One or more computing devices 125 include instances of a data lake130. One or more computing devices 145 include instances of an indexer150. One or more computing devices 155 include instances of an eventdata store interface 160 and/or an event data store 165. One or morecomputing devices 170 include instances of a user interface 175 and/or aservice interface 178. In alternative embodiments, one or more of thelistener 120, data lake 130, indexer 150, event data store 165, userinterface 175 and/or service interface 178 may execute on a singlemachine. For example, each of these components may execute on onemachine. In another example, some components may execute on a firstmachine and other components may execute on a second machine.Accordingly, many different configurations of the ECMS 102 are possible.

Computing devices 115, 125, 145, 155, 170 may be hardware computingdevices that include physical machines and/or virtual machines hosted byphysical machines. The physical machines may be rackmount servers,desktop computers, blade servers, or other computing devices. In oneembodiment, at least one of the computing devices 115, 125, 145, 155,170 includes a virtual machine managed and provided by a cloud providersystem. Each virtual machine offered by a cloud service provider may behosted on a physical machine configured as part of a cloud. Suchphysical machines are often located in a data center. The cloud providersystem and cloud may be provided as an infrastructure as a service(IaaS) layer. One example of such a cloud is Amazon's® Elastic ComputeCloud (EC2®).

One or more computing devices 115 may be arranged in a cluster.Similarly, one or more computing devices 125 may be arranged in acluster, one or more computing devices 145 may be arranged in a cluster,one or more computing devices 155 may be arranged in a cluster and oneor more computing devices 170 may be arranged in a cluster. The clustersmay provide load balancing, high availability functionality, failoverfunctionality, and so on. In instances where the computing devices arevirtual machines, additional computing devices may be instantiated withappropriate components of the ECMS 102 as load increases. Similarly,virtual machines may be terminated as load on particular components ofthe ECMS 102 decreases.

The various computing devices 115, 125, 145, 155, 170 may be connectedvia one or more networks, which may include a local area network (LAN),a wide area network (WAN) such as the Internet, and or a combinationthereof. Additionally, computing devices 115 may be connected to one ormore data sources 105A, 105B through 105N via one or more networks. Usercomputing devices 180 and/or third party computing devices 182 executingthird party services 185 may be connected to computing devices 170 viaone or more networks.

Data sources 105A-N are providers of raw data streams of log data. Datasources 105A-N may be devices in an enterprise environment (e.g., on anetwork of an enterprise) that produce log data. Examples of suchdevices include computing devices (e.g., server computing devices) thatgenerate system logs, firewalls, routers, identity management systems,switches, and so on. Data sources 105A-N may also include applications,services, modules, etc. that generate log data. The log data in the rawdata streams may differ between data sources 105A-N. Examples of logdata formats include Syslog messages, simple network management protocol(SNMP) logs, reports from devices and/or applications running ondevices, application programming interface (API) call records,information exchange protocols, remote authentication dial-in userservice (RADIUS) logs, lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP)logs, security assertion markup language (SAML) messages, and so forth.

The mechanism of receiving the raw data streams may differ between datasources 105A-N. In some instances, a data source 105A-N establishes aconnection to listener 120 using a particular port and internet protocol(IP) address. Connections may be made, for example, using transmissioncontrol protocol (TCP) or user datagram protocol (UDP). For example, ifTCP is used then the data source 105A-N may send hypertext transportprotocol (HTTP) and/or HTTP over secure socket layer (HTTPS) messages.If standard HTTP or UDP are used to send a raw data stream, then thedata source 105A-N may encrypt the raw data stream before sending tosecure log data in the raw data stream. Listener 120 may then decryptthe raw data stream on receipt.

For some data sources 105A-N, the listener 120 periodically queries thedata source 105A-N for the raw data stream containing the log data. Forexample, data source 105N may include an account of a third partyservice such Salesforce.com®, DropBox®, Box®, and so on. In such aninstance, listener 120 uses provided account credentials to log into anaccount of a customer and query the third party service for log data.

Some data sources such as data source 105B may not include a nativecapability to send log data to listener 120 via either a push model or apull model. In such instances, an agent 110 may be installed on the datasource 105B. The agent 110 may collect log data from the data source105B and may send a raw data stream containing the log data to listener120. For example, agent 110 may scan directories and/or files on adevice to generate log data (e.g., identifying file contents in thedirectories and/or information about scanned files), and may then sendthat log data to listener 120. In another example, agent 110 may scancommit logs of a database, may generate pseudo log entries from thecommit logs, and may send the pseudo log entries to listener 120. In oneembodiment, agent 110 encrypts log data before sending it to listener120. Alternatively, or additionally, agent 110 may receive a raw datastream from the data source 105B via UDP and may then send the raw datastream to listener 120 via TCP. Accordingly, agent 110 may provideadditional mechanisms and/or protocols not natively supported by datasource 105A to enable data source 105A to send log data using thosemechanisms and/or protocols.

In some embodiments, the agent 110 records metadata indicating the datasource 105A, such as names of files and/or file paths that data iscollected from, names of directories that data is collected from, portsat which the agent received log data, IP addresses from which the agent110 received log data, and so on. The provided metadata may later beused by the listener 120 to identify a data source. For example, if anagent 110 receives log data from multiple different data sources, thatagent 110 may record metadata associated with each of those data sourcesto enable the listener 120 to distinguish between raw data streams fromthose two data sources. In another example, agent 110 may scandirectories for log files, and may find multiple different log files allhaving different log formats. By transmitting information about theparticular log files, agent 110 may enable the listener 120 to determineeach of those log formats.

In some instances, enterprises may be configured to collect log data forthird party systems such as SIEMs. In such an embodiment, theenterprises may additionally send the log data to listener 120.Alternatively, or additionally, listener 120 may receive the log datadirectly from the SIEMs. Such log data may be received before and/orafter the SEIMs operate on the log data.

Listener 120 is a component of the ECMS 102 that receives raw datastreams and writes the raw data streams to a data lake 130. Listener 120listens for raw data streams from many different data sources 105A-N.Listener 120 creates a separate raw data stream record in the data lake130 for each data source, and writes the raw data stream from that datasource 105A-N into the appropriate raw data stream record. Each raw datastream may be a constant or periodic stream of data. For example, somedata streams may be sent once a day at a particular time. Other datastreams may be sent as new data becomes available. Data streams may alsobe received at other regular or non-regular periodicity.

Data lake 130 is a large object-based data store 135 accompanied by aprocessing engine (data store interface 135) to operate on data in thedata store 135. Data lake 130 may be capable of storing and operating onany type of data, regardless of a format of that data. Data lake 130stores data such as raw data streams in a native format of the data.Examples of data lakes include Azure Data Lake®, Kafka®, Rabbit MQ®, andHadoop®. Data store interface 135 receives read and write requests, andperforms reads to the data store 140 and writes from the data store 140responsive to those read and write requests. For example, data storeinterface 135 may receive write requests from listener 120 to writemessages containing log data of a raw data stream to a raw data streamrecord. Data store interface 135 may also respond to read and writerequests from indexer 150.

Indexer 150 reads log data from the data lake 130, generates events fromthe log data, and writes those events to event data store 165.Responsive to reading log data from a raw data stream record in the datalake 130, indexer 150 may break the log data into discrete log entries,and write those discrete log entries to a corrected data stream recordin the data lake 130. Indexer 145 may then read discrete log entriesfrom the corrected data stream record, and determine fields of thediscrete log entry to be used as link keys and/or index keys for thatlog entry. The indexer 145 generates an event for that discrete logentry, and writes a separate instance of the event to the event datastore 165 for each determined link key or index key. The number offields and selection of specific fields of the log entry to use as linkkeys and/or index keys may vary from event to event based on log formatand/or a source type of a data source that the log entry was receivedfrom. Each field designated as a link key and/or index key may be usedto index the event in the event data store.

Event data store 165 is a data store used to store events. In oneembodiment, event data store 165 is a database other than a relationaldatabase (e.g., a NoSQL database). In one embodiment, event data store165 is implemented using a NoSQL database that uses a key-value store, adocument store, and/or a wide column store. Examples of NoSQL databasesthat may be used for the data store 165 include Apache Casandra®,MongoDB®, and Redis®. However, many other types of NoSQL databases mayalternatively be used. Event data store interface 160 executes queriesto search the event data store 165 and executes write requests to writeto the event data store 165. The write requests may be received, forexample, from indexer 150 and/or listener 120. The queries may bereceived, for example, from listener 120, user interface 175 and/orservice interface 178.

User interface 175 may be a web interface that users may access fromuser computing devices 180. For example, user interface 175 may be a webserver that serves web pages, and user computing devices 180 may executeweb browsers that interface with the user interface 175. Via the userinterface 175, users may request queries to the event data store 165. Aquery may include one or more field values, identification of one ormore fields or field types associated with the field values, and/or atime period. A query may additionally include a specific contentrequest, such as a request to identify a user, a request to identify adevice, a request for specific types of event contexts, and so on.Responsive to receiving request from a user computing device 180, userinterface 175 generates a query and sends the query to event data storeinterface 160. Event data store interface 160 then searches the eventdata store and returns results to user interface 175. User interface 175then analyzes the data, consolidates it, generates a report, and sendsthe report to the user computing device 180.

Service interface 178 performs similar operations to those of userinterface 175, but interfaces with third party services 185 rather thanusers. Examples of such third party services include SIEM services suchas HP Arcsight®, Novell NetIQ®, IBM Q1 Labs®, Quest®, Splunk®, and soon. Service interface 178 may receive a query request from a third partyservice 185, and may issue a query to the event data store 165 in asimilar manner as described with reference to the user interface 175.The service interface 178 may then generate a response to the initialrequest from the third party service 185 in accordance with the type ofinformation requested by the third party service 185. Additionally,service interface may determine a format for responding to the thirdparty service 185, and may format the response in accordance with thedetermined format.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a listener 120 of an event contextmanagement system. In one embodiment, listener 120 includes a datasource determiner 212, a source object creator 215 and a data streamwriter 225. Alternatively, the functionality of the data sourcedeterminer 212, source object creator 215 and/or data stream writer 225may be combined into a single module or divided into multiple modules.Moreover, multiple instances of the source object creator 215 and/ordata stream writer 225 may be instantiated in listener 120.

Listener 120 receives raw data streams 210 from multiple different datasources 105A-N. The raw data streams 210 may each include one or moremessages, where each message includes anywhere from a part of a singlelog entry to many log entries. The raw data stream 210 may include oneline of data or multiple lines of data that arrive in a single flow ofdata. The different raw data streams 210 is an initial data stream thatmay include log data of various different formats. However, it can beassumed that all log data from a single data source will have the samelog format.

The log data received in the raw data streams 210 may be data that hasbeen generated from native sources. Examples of log data include Syslogentries, simple network management protocol (SNMP) logs, reports fromone or more systems, logs of application programming interface (API)calls, logs associated with information exchange protocols, remoteauthentication dial-in user service (RADIUS) logs, lightweight directoryaccess protocol (LDAP) logs, security assertion markup language (SAML)logs, and so on.

Responsive to receipt of a raw data stream 210, data source determiner212 determines a data source 105A-N from which the raw data stream 210was received. As discussed above, the raw data streams may be receivedin many ways. For example, raw data streams may be pushed by datasources via UDP or TCP, may be pulled from data sources via UDP or TCP,may be received based on using uniform resource locators (URLs) toaccess third party services (e.g., Salesforce.com®, Dropbox®, etc.)using HTTP requests, may be retrieved from directories or files, may bereceived from agents, and so on. Data source determiner 212 usesinformation on how the raw data stream 210 arrived at the listener 120and where the raw data stream 210 came from to determine the data source105A-N that the raw data stream 210 was received from.

In a first example, one or more data streams may be received via UDP orTCP at a particular port of the listener 120. If multiple data streamsare received at the same port, then the IP addresses of the sender maybe used to distinguish between data sources. A combination of the senderIP address and the port at which the data stream is received may be usedto distinguish data sources. For example, a stream received at aparticular port from a particular IP range may be from a first datasource that sends firewall logs, and a stream received at a port fromanother IP range may be from a second data source that sends domain namesystem (DNS) logs. In a second example, the data stream may be dataretrieved from a particular URL. In a third example, the data stream maybe log data collected from a particular directory having a directoryname and/or file having a file name and file type. The IP addressesand/or ports, host names, URLs, file names, file types, file paths,directory names, delivery method and/or other information may be used toidentify a particular data source 105A-N.

Once the data source 105A-N is identified, if the data source 105A-N isa new data source data source determiner 212 attempts to determine asource type associated with the new data source. Data source determiner212 may use the information on where the raw data stream came from andhow the raw data stream arrived at the listener 120 to perform a lookupin configuration data 238. For example, port data and/or IP address dataassociated with the raw data stream 210 may be used to perform a lookupin the configuration data 238.

The configuration data 238 may include entries for multiple differentsource types. Each entry may include information identifying one or morelog formats based on data sources, how data is received from the datasources, and how the data arrives at the listener 120. For example, aparticular source type may include an entry identifying particular IPaddress(s) and/or port(s) associated with the source type. In thisexample, raw data streams received from the particular IP address and atthe particular port number may be identified as having the particularsource type. A source type may additionally include a definition of alog format, one or more context definitions, fields to assign fieldtypes to, and/or additional information. An example of configurationdata 238 is illustrated in FIG. 5.

For convenience the configuration data 238 is shown as being located inthe event data store 165. In such an embodiment, the configuration data238 may be managed by a configuration service on the event data store165. Alternatively, the configuration data 238 and a configurationservice may be deployed on a separate computing device that does notinclude the event data store 165. In other embodiments, copies of theconfiguration data 238 may be stored at each of the computing devices115, 125, 145, 155, 170 discussed with reference to FIG. 1.

Source object creator 215 may create a data source object 235 for thenew data source in the event data store 165. Alternatively, sourceobject creator 215 may create the data source object 235 in a data storeother than the event data store 165. For example, a separate data storemay be maintained for data source objects in an embodiment. In oneembodiment, to create the data source object in the event data store 165source object creator 215 issues a command to data store interface 135to cause the data store interface 135 to create the data source object235. A unique data source identifier (ID) is assigned to the data sourceobject, and may be used to identify data streams, messages, events andlog entries associated with that data source object. The data source IDmay be a universally unique identifier (UUID) in some embodiments.

If data source determiner 212 was able to determine the source typeassociated with the data source object, an identification of that sourcetype is added to the data source object 235. This enables othercomponents of the ECMS to later determine a log format for log entriesfrom the data source, separate log entries from the raw data stream fromthat data source, parse log entries from that data source, assign fieldtypes to fields of the log entries from the data source, determinecontext definitions associated with the log entries, generate events forthe log entries, and so on.

Data stream writer 225 creates a new raw data stream record 245 in thedata lake 130 to store the raw data stream 210 from the new data source.This may include issuing a command to data store interface 135 to causethe data store interface 135 to generate the raw data stream record 245in data store 140. Data stream writer 225 includes the data source ID(and in some instances the determined source type) in the command, andthe data source ID is included in a raw data stream record ID of the rawdata stream record 245. In one embodiment, the raw data stream record IDfor the raw data stream record includes the data source ID as a root andan identifier of the stream type. A raw data stream record may have theformat “UUID-raw”. For example, if the data source ID was “firewall2”,then the raw data stream record ID may be “firewall2-raw”. In someinstances, the source type is also identified for the raw data streamrecord.

Once a data source object 235 and raw data stream record 245 have beengenerated for a particular data source 105A-N, new data in the raw datastream 210 from that data source 235 is written to the raw data streamrecord 245 associated with the data source object 235. To write a rawdata stream 210 to the data lake 130, data stream writer 225 may issue awrite command including at least one of an appropriate data source ID orraw data stream record ID to the data store interface 135. The datastore interface 135 may then write the raw data stream record 210 to theraw data stream record 245 having the raw data stream record ID thatmatches the received raw data stream record ID or that partially matchesthe received data source record ID. The data lake 130 may have many rawdata stream records 245, where each raw data stream record 245 includeslog data from a single data source 105A-N.

In one embodiment, listener 120 splits the raw data stream 210 intoequally sized data chunks or blocks. For example, the listener 120 maysplit the data into 10 kb blocks, 4 kb blocks, 1 Mb blocks, or blockshaving other sizes. Each block may contain a number of complete logentries and may contain one or more partial log entries. Each block maybe tagged with the source object ID and/or an identifier of the sourcetype associated with the raw data stream 210. Additionally, each blockmay be tagged with a time stamp representing the receipt time (when theblock was received from the data source). In one embodiment, the datalake 130 is a messaging system that guarantees message order. This mayensure that partial log entries that span two messages can be mergedinto complete log entries.

Listener 120 may send a notice to the indexer to wake the indexer andcause the indexer to begin processing log data in the raw data streamrecord 245 once that log data is written in the data lake 130. When datastream writer 225 writes data in a raw data stream 210 to the raw datastream record 245, data stream writer 245 may determine an amount oftime that has passed since log data was previously written to the rawdata stream record 245. If more than a threshold amount of time haspassed (e.g., 10 minutes, 4 hours, 1 day, etc.), then listener 120 maysend the notice to the indexer. In one embodiment, the data lake 130includes a notice data stream record, and the notice is sent to theindexer by writing the notice to the notice data stream record. Thenotice may indicate the raw data stream record 245 that contains data tobe processed. The indexer may periodically or continuously check thenotice data stream record. Response to identifying a new entry in thenotice data stream record, the indexer may read the entry to determine araw data stream record having new log data to process, and may thenprocess that new log data.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an indexer 150 of an event contextmanagement system. In one embodiment, indexer 150 includes a source typedeterminer 308, a source object updater 310, a log separator 315, a logparser 330 and an event writer 345. Alternatively, the functionality ofthe source type determiner 308, source object updater 310, log separator315, log parser 330 and/or event writer 345 may be combined into asingle module or divided into multiple modules. Moreover, multipleinstances of the source type determiner 308, source object updater 310,log separator 315, log parser 330 and/or event writer 345 may beinstantiated in indexer 150.

Log separator 315 retrieves raw log data 305 from raw data streamrecords in the data lake 130. The raw log data 305 may be log fatahaving an original format that the log data had when it was initiallycreated, or close thereto. Alternatively, the raw log data may be logdata that has been minimally modified (e.g., by tagging the log datawith a source ID and/or a source type). The raw log data 305 may beretrieved by issuing read commands to data store interface 135 of thedata lake 130. Responsive to receiving raw log data 305, log separator315 determines whether the source type is known for the data sourceobject associated with the raw log data 305. In one embodiment, logseparator 315 determines the data source ID associated with the raw datastream record 245 that the raw log data 305 is retrieved from, andissues a query to the event data store 165 using the data source ID. Theevent data store 165 may then return the data source object 235 havingthe data source ID and/or may return specific information about the datasource object 235 (e.g., a particular source type or an indication thatthe source type is unknown). Alternatively, the source type or unknownsource type may be identified in metadata associated with the raw logdata (e.g., in a header of the raw log data).

If the source type for the data source object 235 is unknown, sourcetype determiner 308 analyzes the raw log data 305 to attempt todetermine the source type based on the contents of the raw log data 305.Based on the analysis of the raw log data, source type determiner 308may determine information such as a file type, and may further determinea pattern in the log data and/or common elements in the log data. Forexample, source type determiner may identify a common header format,common fields, data type, and so on between log entries.

Source type determiner 308 may then compare the determined information,pattern and/or common elements to known log formats associated withsource types. In one embodiment, source type determiner 308 compares thedetermined information, pattern and/or common elements to each of thelog formats of source types included in configuration data 238. If thedetermined information, pattern, common elements, etc. match theelements of a known log format associated with a source type, thensource type determiner 308 determines that the data source thatoriginated the raw log data 305 has that source type. Source objectupdater 310 may then update the data source object 235 associated withthe raw data stream record 245 to include an indication of the sourcetype.

If source type determiner 308 is unable to determine the source typeassociated with a particular data source object 235 (and the associatedraw log data 305 and raw data stream record 245), then no further actionmay be taken at that time. The data source determiner 308 may lateranalyze the raw log data 305 from the raw data stream record 245 againafter more raw log data has been written to the raw data stream record245. The additional log data may be sufficient to enable the data sourcedeterminer 308 to determine the source type of the data source fromwhich the log data was received. This process may be repeated until thesource type can be identified. In some instances, a data source may beassociated with a new source type that is not reflected in theconfiguration data 238. In such an instance, the source type would notbe determined until the configuration data 238 is updated to includethat new source type.

If the source type associated with raw log data is known, then indexer150 has information that identifies how to parse the raw log data,including information that can be used to identify the beginning andending of discrete log entries in the raw log data 305. The raw log data305 may include multiple messages that were received from the datasource. Each message may include a part of a log entry, a full logentry, multiple full log entries, or some partial log entries and somefull log entries. For example, a message may include a partial log entryat the beginning, multiple complete log entries, and then a partial logentry at the end. Log separator 315 uses the log format information fromthe source type associated with the raw log data to identify the borders(e.g., the beginnings and endings) of each discrete log entry in themessages. Log separator 315 then separates the raw log data 305 intowell-formed discrete log entries.

Messages may be stored in the data lake 130 in the order in which theyare received, may be stamped with time stamps, and may be read from theraw data stream record 245 in order based on the time stamps. If the endof a first message contains a partial log entry (e.g., the start of alog entry), then the subsequent message will contain the rest of thatlog entry (e.g., the end of the log entry). Log separator 315 may mergethe partial log entries from two sequential messages to form a completediscrete log entry.

Log separator 315 generates a corrected data stream 320 that includesthe separated discrete log entries, and writes the corrected data stream320 to a corrected data stream record 325 in the data lake 130. Thecorrected data stream record 325 in one embodiment contains the datasource ID and a further identifier that indicates that the correcteddata stream record contains discrete log entries. In one embodiment, thecorrected data stream record 325 has a label of “UUID-single”. Forexample, if the data source ID was “firewall2”, then the ID for thecorrected data stream record 325 may be “firewall2-single”.

Log parser 330 reads discrete log entries 328 from the corrected datastream records 325 and parses those discrete log entries 328. Responsiveto receiving a discrete log entry 328, log parser 330 determines thesource type associated with that discrete log entry 328. For example,log parser 330 may perform a lookup using the UUID associated with thediscrete log entry to receive the data source object 235 having thatUUID. The log parser 330 may then determine the source type included inthe data source object 235. Alternatively, the source type may beidentified in the discrete log entry 328. Log parser 330 may then usethe determined source type to determine a log format of the discrete logentry based on the configuration data 238. The source type may be orinclude a transform that will transform particular log entries intoevents, which are discussed in greater detail below.

In determining the log format of the discrete log entry 328, log parser330 may initially determine a high level format for the discrete logentry, and then determine low level formatting of the discrete log entry328. The high level format may include a comma separated values (CSV)format, an extensible markup language (XML) format, a Javascript® objectnotation (JSON) format, a regular expressions (REGEX) format, and so on.The low level format may include the specific fields of the log entryand the location of those fields in the log entry. The low level formatmay additionally include information on compound values of particularfields and how to separate those compound values into multiple discretevalues. For example, a field might contain the values of “IP address:port.” The low level format may indicate this compound field and how tobreak the compound field into separate fields, one being an IP addressfield having the field value of “IP address” and the other being a portfield having the field value of “port”.

The low level format may also include additional information on how tointerpret the field values of the fields in the discrete log entry 328.For example, the data in the discrete log entry 328 may be interpreteddifferently depending on the field value of a specific field (or fields)in the discrete log entry 328. The configuration data 238 may furtherindicate how to interpret the data in the discrete log entry 328 basedon the field value of the specific field.

In one embodiment, a source type may include references to additionaltransforms that will be used to interpret specific portions of thediscrete log entry 328 and to assist in generating an event from thatdiscrete log entry 328. Additional transforms may be included in theconfiguration data, and may be referenced in source types.

The source type (and in some instances the additional transforms)describe how to parse a log entry based on the high and low levelformatting of the log entry. The source type (and in some instances theadditional transforms) further defines a subset of the fields in the logentry that are to be assigned field types as well as the field types toassign to those fields. The field types identify fields that are to beused as index keys and that are to be later used as link keys forlinking events during searches for events. Those fields that are notassigned field types will not be used as link keys or index keys.

Log parser 330 then generates an event based on the discrete log entry,where the event is a version of the discrete log entry that is annotatedwith additional information such as the assigned field types. In oneembodiment the event includes a dictionary of key value pairs, whereeach key value pair in the dictionary includes a field name as the keyand a field value as the value. Those key value pairs associated withfields that have been assigned field types may further include a fieldtype value. Alternately, the field type information may be included asadditional key value pairs in a field type section of the dictionary.Events additionally include a start time and potentially an end time,which may be determined from fields in the discrete log entry andrepresented as fields in the event.

Examples of field types that may be assigned to fields include “IPaddress”, “MAC address”, “user ID”, “host ID”, and so on. Each sourcetype may indicate a different set of fields that are to be assignedfield types. At any time, the source type may be updated to modify thefields that are to be assigned field types, and therefore to modify thefields that will be used as index keys and/or link keys.

Most log entries contain many fields that do not contribute usefulinformation for determining event context, for investigating securityconcerns, for investigating network problems, or for other purposes.Such fields may dilute and/or obfuscate those fields that do containuseful information. By generating events that identify those fields thatcontain useful information and specifying those fields for use as indexkeys and/or link keys, meaningful relationships between events can bedetermined in queries to the event data store 165. For example, if twoevents both contain the same device IP address that has been assigned anIP address field type, those two events may be linked based on that hostIP address during a search, and information from both of the events maybe used to determine a context surrounding the two events.

In some embodiments, each of the assigned field types has a uniform dataformat. Accordingly, all fields that are labeled with a particular fieldtype will represent data in the same way. For example, for IPv6 IPaddresses may be represented in numerous different ways. However, the IPaddress field type may specify a particular format to represent IPaddresses. If a log entry uses a different format to represent an IPaddress, log parser 330 may invoke a transform to cause the IP addressof a field associated with the IP field type to be reformatted from thedifferent format to the particular format set forth in the IP addressfield type. This may ensure that matches for the same IP address willoccur between events.

In other embodiments, fields having a particular field type are mappedto a particular data format. For example, all IP addresses may be mappedto an internal address format, which may be included in theconfiguration data. The field values may be written in their originalformat, but may be converted to the internal format for event contextgeneration and queries into the event data store. This may ensure thatmatches for the same IP address, for example, will occur between eventswithout actually modifying the original field values.

Once the log parser 330 has generated an event 350 from a discrete logentry 328, event writer 345 writes that event 350 to the event datastore 165. Multiple instances of a single event may be written to theevent data store 165. In one embodiment, event writer 345 writes anevent entry for the event 350 to the event data store 165 once for eachfield of that event that has an assigned field type. Each event entryfor the event 350 may be indexed in the event data store 165 using thefield value of a specific field of the event that has an assigned fieldtype. In one embodiment, each event entry for the event 350 is indexedin a particular table associated with a particular field type. Eachtable may include a primary key corresponding to a particular fieldtype.

Events may span a period of time (e.g., may include a start time and anend time). In some embodiments, events are stored in time periodpartitions in the event data store (e.g., partitions that are bounded byday, by week, by hour, etc.). In such an embodiment, if an event spansmultiple time periods, then that event may be written into the eventdata store for each partition having a time period that the event's timespan overlaps. In an example, events are partitioned by day and an eventstarts at 11:30 PM on day 1 and ends at 12:30 AM on day 2. The exampleevent has 4 fields that have assigned field types. In this example, theevent would be written into the day 1 partition four times (once foreach field having an assigned field type) and would be written into theday 2 partition four times (once for each field having an assigned fieldtype).

In one embodiment, there is a separate event writer 345 for each fieldtype. A particular event writer 345 may include information on how towrite an event to the event data store 165 using a field value of afield having a particular field type. For example, an IP address eventwriter may be used to write events to the event data store 165 in amanner that indexes the event using an IP address. In one embodiment, towrite an event to an event data store the event writer 345 sends aninstruction to a DBMS that manages the event data store (e.g., to eventdata store interface 160). Thus, a separate instruction may be sent tothe DBMS for each field of an event that has been assigned a field type.A user ID event writer may be used to write events to the event datastore 165 in a manner that indexes the event using a user ID. Multipledifferent event writers may write the same event to the event data store165.

In an example, an event may include a source IP address field having anIP address field type, a destination IP address field having an IPaddress field type and a port field having a port field type. The eventmay be indexed in an IP address field type table based on the fieldvalue of the destination IP address field, may be further indexed in theIP address field type table based on the field value of the source IPaddress field, and may be further indexed in a port field type tablebased on the field value of the port field.

In one embodiment, in which the event data store 165 is implemented on acluster of machines, different machines in the cluster may containdifferent field type tables. This may distribute the load associatedwith searching tables between machines and improve search speeds for theevent data store 165.

In some instances log parser 330 may be unable to successfully parse adiscrete log entry 328 from a corrected data stream record 325. Beforeparsing a discrete log entry, log parser may first determine whetherthat discrete log entry satisfies one or more criteria. In oneembodiment, the one or more criteria include a parsable criterion. Ifthe discrete log entry is parsable, log parser 3330 performs theoperations of parsing the log entry, generating an event, and writingthe event to the event data store.

In one embodiment, log parser 330 generates an unparsed data stream 335containing the unparsed log entries from a corrected data stream record325. Log parser 330 then writes the unparsed data stream 335 to anunparsed data stream record 340 in the data lake. In one embodiment, theunparsed data stream record 340 has a label of “UUID-unparsed”. Forexample, if the data source ID was “firewall2”, then the ID for theunparsed data stream record 340 may be “firewall2-unparsed”.Accordingly, the data lake 130 may contain three separate data streamrecords 245, 325, 340 for each data source.

The unparsed log entries in an unparsed data stream record 340 may bemodified by a user and/or process to place those unparsed log entriesinto a form that is parsable. Once the unparsed log entries have beenmodified, log parser 330 may read these unparsed log entries from theunparsed data stream record 340 to generate events as described above.Alternatively, or additionally, the log parser 330 may be updated toenable the log parser 330 to parse one or more previously unparsable logentries. The log parser 330 may be updated by a software update in someembodiments. Alternatively, or additionally, the system type associatedwith an unparsed data stream record may be updated in configurationdata. The system type may initially have been incorrectly configured(e.g., with incorrect log format data), and this may have caused one ormore unparsed log entries associated with that source type to beunparsable. Updating the system type may correct such issues in someembodiments.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a user interface 175 and a serviceinterface 178 of an event context management system. The user interface175 and the service interface 178 each perform the function ofreceiving, acting on, and responding to queries or requests fromclients. User interface 175 may interface with users and provide agraphical user interface that is navigable by a user. In contrast,service interface 178 may interface with services such as a securityevent management (SEM) system, a security information management (SIM)system, a security event and information management (SIEM) system, anintrusion detection system (IDS), a user behavior analytics system(UBA), or other system.

User interface 175 and service interface 178 may contain similarcomponents and perform similar operations. However, how the userinterface 175 and service interface 178 interact with clients and howthey package data for clients may differ. In one embodiment, userinterface 175 includes an event searcher 405, a context determiner 410and a response generator 415. Similarly, service interface 178 mayinclude an event searcher 420, a context determiner 425 and a responsegenerator 430. Alternatively, the functionality of the event searcher405, context determiner 410 and/or response generator 415 may becombined into a single module or divided into multiple modules.Similarly, the functionality of the event searcher 420, contextdeterminer 425 and/or response generator 430 may be combined into asingle module or divided into multiple modules. In some embodiments, theuser interface 175 and service interface 178 may be combined into asingle module that can service requests from both users and third partyservices.

User interface 175 may be a web server that receives requests 435 fromuser computing devices 180 via HTTP and sends responses 440 to thoserequests via HTTP. User computing devices 180 may be desktop computers,server computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, or other types ofcomputing devices. The user computing devices 180 may execute webbrowsers that interface with the user interface 175 using HTTP.Alternatively, the user computing devices 180 may execute applicationsthat are specifically configured to interface with user interface 175.

User interface 175 receives requests 435 from user computing devices180. The requests may be queries or requests to issue queries to theevent data store 165. Users may be administrators or operationspersonnel who issue requests to user interface 175 to resolve problemtickets, investigate alerts about possible problems in an enterprise'soperation, and so on. For example, an administrator may receive a reportthat a network is down, that a particular employee cannot access a webserver, that a network is slow, and so on. In another example, anidentity management device may alert the user that a particular employeehas failed to successfully log in to an account a threshold number oftimes, which might mean that someone is trying to brute force an entryonto a system of an enterprise.

The administrator may start with minimal information about a problem oralert, such as the particular device that generated the alert, theparticular network that is experiencing a problem, a time that theproblem occurred, and so on. The administrator may then issue a query tothe user interface 175 that includes the known information.

In another example, a SIEM may generate an ordered list of potentialthreats known as a burn down list and provide this list to the user. Theuser may then select a log entry from the burn down list and input fieldvalues from the selected entry into a query to the user interface.

In one embodiment, user interface 175 receives the ordered list ofpotential threats (e.g., the burn down list) from a SIEM. The userinterface 175 may display the burn down list to a user, and the user mayselect a log entry from the burn down list that the user wishes toinvestigate. In one embodiment, the user interface 175 provides agraphical interface in which the user is able to select the log entryfrom the burn down list, and is able to further select specific fieldvalues from the selected log entry to perform searches on.

A request from a user computing device 180 may indicate one or morefield values and a time period. The request may also indicate one ormore fields or field types associated with the provided field values.For example, a request may indicate that a received field value is an IPaddress, a port, a user ID, and so on. The provided time period may be asingle point in time (e.g., 1:00 PM on Mar. 15, 2014) or a time range.Time ranges may be open ended time ranges that specify just a start timeor just an end time, or may be closed ended time ranges that specifyboth a start time and an end time. For example, a time period may be1:00 PM to 5:00 PM on Mar. 15, 2014. Specified time periods may also bea particular day, a particular week, a particular month, and so on.

Responsive to user interface 175 receiving a request 435, event searcher405 determines one or more queries to issue to the event data store 165based on the request. The queries may include the time period and thefield value or field values that were provided in the request. The queryor queries may additionally include any other information that wasprovided in the request, such as the field type or specific fieldassociated with the provided field value or field values.

If no field type or field identifier was provided with the field value,event searcher 405 may analyze the provided field value to determine oneor more field types that might correspond to the field value. Eventsearcher 405 may determine the possible field types based on comparing aformat of the field value to the formats of each of the possible fieldtypes. For any field type that has a format that matches the format ofthe provided field value, event searcher may identify a possible match.For example, if the field value was “192.168.0.1”, then the eventsearcher might determine that the field value has an IP address fieldtype.

In one embodiment, if the field type of the provided field value isknown, then event searcher issues a query to a particular field typetable 475 associated with the known field type using the field value asa key. The query additionally includes the time period indicated in therequest from the user computing device. Events having one or more fieldswith that field type may be indexed in the field type table 475 based onthe field values associated with those one or more fields. If the fieldtype is unknown, then event searcher may issue a separate query on eachof the field type tables 475 associated with field types having fieldvalue formats that match a format of the provided field value.Alternatively, event searcher 405 may issue queries to each of the fieldtype tables 475.

Event searcher 405 receives responses 440 to the one or more queriesthat were issued to the event data store 165. The received responses 440include one or more events 350 having a field that matches the queriedfield value and a time stamp that matches the queried time period. Ifthe time period was a range, then the returned events would have a timestamp that falls within the range.

Context determiner 410 processes each of the events that are received inresponses 440. To process an event, context determiner 410 determines asource type associated with that event. The source type may be indicatedas metadata in the event. Alternatively, or additionally, a UUID of adata source object for a data source that generated the log entry thatthe event is based on may be included in the metadata for the event. TheUUID may be used to determine the source type associated with the event.In one embodiment, the UUID is used as a pointer to a data sourceobject. The UUID may be used in a query to the event data store 165 toretrieve information on the data source object 235 associated with theevent, where the retrieved information includes the source type.

Once the source type associated with an event is determined, contextdeterminer 410 determines one or more context definitions associatedwith that source type. The context definition(s) associated with asource type are included in configuration data as entries of the sourcetype. A typical source type (and thus a typical event) will beassociated with a single context definition. However, some source typesmay be associated with two or more context definitions. The source typealso indicates field types associated with specific fields in the event.The source type may also indicate any additional transforms that wereused to generate the event, and may include pointers to those additionaltransforms. The source type and/or transforms may then be used todetermine the field types of each of the fields in the event.

A context definition is a list of fields that defines the fields to usefor determination of an event's context. The context definition furtherdefines the fields to use as link keys for events associated with aspecific source type. In one embodiment, these fields are determinativeof the information that will be gathered and presented in responses 442to user computing devices 180.

Once the context definition associated with an event is determined,context determiner 410 may determine the event context for the eventusing the context definition. By adding an event context to an event,the context determiner 410 is encoding knowledge and meaning into apreviously static log entry. The event context for an event may be avalues list or dictionary of key value pairs that includes each of thefields specified in the context definition and the field values forthose fields from the event. The event context represents a succinctsummary of the information about the event that provides a particularlogical meaning for the event. In other words, the context definition isusable to characterize a particular meaning for an event that it isapplied to, and that particular meaning is represented in the eventcontext. Information other than the fields specified in the contextdefinition (e.g., information such as number of bytes that weretransmitted, protocols used, which particular machine reported theevent, etc.) may be disregarded for the determined event context,leaving behind a succinct meaning.

In an example, an identity context definition may be applied to an eventto determine an identity context for that event, where the identitycontext associates a user to at least one of a device, a location or analias. For example, the identity context may reveal particular usersassociated with virtual private network (VPN) logs, RADIUS logs, OpenIDlogs, OAuth authentication logs, and so on.

In another example, an endpoint context definition may be applied to anevent to describe a particular device on a network or changes to aparticular device. For example, an endpoint context may revealparticular devices from dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP)acknowledgments, reboot records, software installation logs, storageattachment logs, and so on.

In another example, a network context definition may be applied to anevent to describe traffic across a network. For example, a networkcontext may reveal traffic information from network translation logs,firewall transit logs, and so on. In another example, an applicationcontext definition may be applied to an event to describe at least oneof a service request or a service response associated with that event.In another example, a data context definition may be applied to an eventto describe content of network traffic. For example, a data context mayreveal interactions with services on a network based on data requests,web requests, and so on. In another example, a threat context definitionmay be applied to an event to describe a network threat detected by atleast one of an intrusion detection system (IDS), a security event andinformation management (SIEM) system, a database, or a user behavioranalytics (UBA) system. Other types of context definitions may beapplied to events to determine other types of contexts.

A context definition additionally indicates a context type associatedwith the context definition. A non-exhaustive list of context typesincludes an identity context type, an endpoint context type, a networkcontext type, an application context type, a data context type and athreat context type. Multiple different context definitions may beassociated with the same context type.

Each event context has a context type based on the context typeassociated with the context definition used to generate that eventcontext. The context determiner 410 compares a generated event contextto the other event contexts having the same context type. Where matchesare found between event contexts, the duplicate event contexts aredropped or deleted, and a count is maintained of the number of instancesof that event context that were identified. Two event contexts may bedetermine to match if those event contexts have matching fields andmatching field values. In some instances, partial matches between eventcontexts may also be determined. For example, a partial match may occurif two event contexts have multiple matching fields with matching fieldvalues, but also contain one or more non-matching fields and/or one ormore non-matching field values. Because information (e.g., fields andfield values) from events that are not relevant to a particular eventcontext are not represented in that event context, the chances for eventcontexts for different events to match is significantly increased. Thisenables potentially thousands of different events to collapse into ahandful of distinct event contexts.

In an example, identity event contexts may be determined for thousandsof events. As a result, context determiner may end up with threedistinct event contexts for three different users of a machine. A firstidentity event context may indicate that a first user (e.g., Bob)performed 400 different tasks on the machine in a particular timeperiod. A second identity event context may indicate that a second user(e.g., Carol) performed 10 different tasks on the machine in theparticular time period. A third identity event context may indicate thata third user (e.g., unidentifiable user) performed a single operation onthe machine in the particular time period. The single operationperformed by the unidentifiable user would ordinarily be buried in theinformation on the hundreds of tasks that were performed by Bob andCarol. However, by representing the events as event contexts, theactions of the unidentifiable user become apparent.

If multiple field values were provided by the user, event searcher 405may issue different queries based on each of the provided field values.In such an instance, event searcher 405 may compare results from thedifferent queries, and may keep the events that were returned as aresult to each of the queries. Other events that were returned from lessthen all of the queries may be discarded. For example, if a first queryfor a first field value returned a first event and a second event, and asecond query for a second field value returned the second event and athird event, then the first event and the third event would bediscarded. Alternatively, a multi-value query may be issued to the eventdata store 165 that returns only those events that match each of thespecified field values.

As previously indicated, the context definitions define the link keys touse to link together events. In one embodiment, event searcher 405performs one or more recursive searches of the event data store 165using the field values from fields of returned events that are specifiedin context definitions associated with those returned events. Thecontext definition associated with an event is usable both to derive thecontext for that event and to determine the link keys to use for furthersearches. The specified fields in the event context represent both thefields to use for the further searches and the fields to use forgenerating the event context. These fields are the fields of an eventthat contain information that characterize that type of event. Forexample, in the instance of an event associated with network security,the context definition may specify the fields of IP addresses, MACaddresses, user identities and host names. Accordingly, event searcher405 may use the generated event context of an event to perform one ormore additional searches into the event data store 165. These additionalsearches are performed using search keys that were not specified in therequest from the user computing device 180 and without any furthersearch request from a user.

Each of the additional queries 438 on the event data store 165 made fromfield values of fields specified in the context definition and includedin an event context returns responses 440 including additional events.Event contexts may be generated from each of these additional events.These event contexts may be combined with the originally determinedevent contexts. This may cause additional contextual information to bedetermined that was not determinable solely based on the original query.

In an example, an initial query may return some events showing aparticular account name. One of those events may additionally indicatean account ID, and a context definition may specify the fields ofaccount ID and account name. That account ID may be searched in afollow-up query. The information associated with both the account nameand the account ID may then be determined. This information would nothave been determined based solely on the initial query of the accountname.

The combined use of assigned field types for indexing of events into theevent data store and assigned context definitions that specify subsetsof those field types to use as link keys for searching the event datastore provides a flexible and changeable way to connect events forqueries. This enables the connections between events to be determinedon-the-fly during a query rather than at the time of database creation.As a result, a system designer does not need to predict what links mightbe important to users during database creation.

In a graph database, by contrast, each edge (connection between twoobjects) is labeled with a role that defines the relationship betweenobjects permanently as part of the database. Accordingly, the link keysin a graph database and other databases are included as part of theschema of the database. As a result, a database designer needs to knowhow events will relate to one another a priori. If the database designeris wrong, then there is no easy way for such databases to findinformation linking events that a user might be looking for. A change tothe link keys in such a database after the database has been populatedwith data can take upwards of a month to complete.

However, in embodiments described herein the link keys (and thus therelationships between events) are represented in context definitions inconfiguration data that is separate from the data store. The event datastore (e.g., event database) itself does not include any information onhow edges are labeled (e.g., on how events are to be linked). Moreover,the context definitions that define the link keys are changeable at anytime, even after the data store has been populated with data. The linkkeys may be changed without making any modifications to the events thatare stored in the event data store 165. The change can be implemented inembodiments in a manner of minutes.

Graph databases also generally form a graph from object to object. Incontrast, embodiments described herein provide links between objects(events) and classes of objects (classes of events). This enables eventsto link to multiple different types of other events. For example, anevent from a syslog entry may link to an event from a firewall log andan event from a DNS log.

Once the context determiner 410 has determined the event contexts forthe events returned in the responses 440 from the initial query and anyadditional queries, response generator 415 generates a report thatincludes information from those event contexts. The report may indicatethe activity that occurred around an alert that was initiallyinvestigated. In one embodiment, the response generator 415 distills theinformation from all of the events (e.g., which may be thousands ofevents) into a concise report that may be presented in one or a fewpages. The concise report may include summaries of the number ofinstances of each event context. The concise report may additionally, oralternatively, identify specific event contexts that are most common,event contexts that are most relevant, event contexts that are unique,field values that are most common, field values that are unique, and soon. In embodiments, the report generated by the response generator 415is designed to enable a user to quickly understand a situationsurrounding an incident quickly and intuitively.

In one embodiment, the response generator 415 compares event contexts toidentify field values that are the same across multiple different eventcontexts. For example, response generator 415 may determine that thesame MAC address is included in many different event contexts, which mayhave the same context type or different context types. Responsegenerator 415 may include a notification in the report that highlightsthe field value or field values that are common to multiple eventcontexts. Response generator 415 may also indicate, for example, anumber of event contexts in which the field value was found. This mayenable a user to easily see the common field values so that the user canfurther investigate those specific field values if so desired.

The report includes results to both the queried field values as well asresults to queries of additional field values that were not queried by auser. These additional queries are queries on field values of fieldsthat are specified in context definitions associated with the eventsreturned from the initial query. Accordingly, additional usefulcontextual information is determined that is related to results of theinitial query. All of these additional (e.g., recursive) searches areperformed in an automated manner without any additional action on thepart of the user to request such additional queries.

In an example, a user may initiate a first query on a username. Some ofthe events that are returned may mention both the username and a userID, where the user ID is another way to identify the same userassociated with the username by some systems that generated log entries.The event searcher 405 may perform an additional search on the user IDthat was included in one or more of the initially returned events. Thismay cause additional events that are associated with the user ID to bereturned. The events associated with the user ID may then beconcatenated with the events associated with the username, whichprovides a greater detailed context surrounding the queried username. Inthis example, it was not known that the username and the user ID weremapped together prior to the search. The ECMS system was able to inferthat the events associated with these different field values would maptogether.

The report generated by response generator 415 may include multipledifferent report sections. In one embodiment, the report includes adifferent report section for each context type reflected in the eventcontexts generated from the returned events. Each section may include asuccinct summary of the event concepts having the context type of thatsection and may include the number of event contexts, highlights fromthe event contexts, lists of the event contexts, and so on. In oneembodiment, each report section is represented as a table. For example,each section may include a separate entry for each unique event context,and may indicate for each event context the number of instances of thatevent context that were identified. Each report section may additionallyindicate a most common event context or multiple most common eventcontexts of that context type, a most common field value or most commonfield values of the event contexts having that context type, and so on.Most common event contexts may be determined, for example, bydetermining a number of instances of multiple different event contexts,comparing the number of instances of these event contexts, and thenselecting the event context having the most instances as the most commonevent context. By grouping the event context information based oncontext type, the efficiency of user investigations is improved.

The report provides a meaning for a collection of returned events basedon distilling those events down into relevant contextual information andcombining that contextual information based on context types. The reportmakes it very easy for a user to understand what all of the returnedevents represent. For example, the report may make it easy for a user toidentify the particular user identities, endpoint identities, networktraffic, transmitted data, reported threats, and so on at a glance. Thereport enables users to perform triage on alerts involving networksecurity, network operations and/or application operations.

In an example, an alert may have initially been generated responsive totoo many failed login attempts on an account. The report generated basedon that alert may identify the number of failed login attempts, whetheror not the login attempts originated from a new, unexpected source,whether or not the credentials have been updated recently, the number ofrecent successful login attempts, and so on. A report containing all ofthis contextual information enables a user to quickly make an informeddecision about whether or not the alert represents a threat. If the userdetermines that the alert represents a threat, then they wouldadditionally be able to ascertain from the report whether there was asuccessful login, and what activity was performed after the successfullogin.

The report may be used by a user to initiate further searches into theevent data store 165 and/or to look up additional information aboutspecific events. For example, a user may select (e.g., click on) aparticular event context to view a list of the individual events thatresolved to that event context. Responsive to the user selecting theevent context, a new request 435 may be sent to user interface 175 for alist of the individual events. The response generator 415 may thenreturn a summary of those events in a response 442. The user may thenselect any of those events from the summary (causing another request 435to be sent to user interface 175), and the response generator 415 mayreturn the selected event, including all of the information that was notincluded in the event context.

In another example, a user may request a follow-up query based oninformation provided in the report. Such a follow-up query is referredto herein as a chained query. A subquery may be issued from a reportbased on selecting one or more field values of one or more eventcontexts included in the report. This may initiate a repeat of the abovedescribed operations, and may result in a new report that is sent to theuser computing device. The new report may include attribution to theevent context and/or field values that were used to initiate thesubquery. A user may continue to issue further subqueries based oninformation from reports, creating a linked chain of queries.

Many different types of events are stored in event data store 165, andthose many types of events may have many different formats. In oneembodiment, the events are annotated versions of original log entriesthat preserve the original formatting and structure of those originallog entries. Accordingly, the events in event data store 165 are notuniform or homogenous. In contrast, SIEM systems normalize log entriesso that all log entries have the same final normalized format. Thisnormalization process destroys the original formatting of the logentries, and can make the log entries more difficult to understand. Forexample, if a log entry has a concept of a destination IP, the SIEMsystem might translate that destination IP to a normalized name.

Since the original formatting and structure of the log entries ismaintained in the events, the events that are returned to users have thesame format that these users will be accustomed to. Accordingly, userscan review and understand the data in the events without any additionallearning curve. This can improve the efficiency of using the ECMSsystem.

As previously mentioned, service interface 178 performs similaroperations to those of user interface 175. For example, event searcher420 receives requests from third party services 185. The requests may bereceived via HTTP or via other protocols such as extensible markuplanguage-remote procedure call (ML-RPC), simple object access protocol(SOAP), advanced message queuing protocol (AMQP), simple/streaming textoriented messaging protocol (STOMP), and so on. A received request mayinclude one or more field values, one or more field types associatedwith those field values, and/or a time period. Additionally a requestmay include a content request asking for particular data that the thirdparty service 185 is searching for.

In an example, the third party service 185 may generate requests askingfor specific information during evaluation of log entries to determine athreat posed by events reflected in those log entries. In many instancesthe third party service 185 may have insufficient information toproperly determine whether certain activity represents a threat. Suchthird party systems may determine what additional information is neededto make such an assessment, and may request that additional informationfrom the ECMS via the service interface 178.

Event searcher 420 performs similar operations as described withreference to event searcher 405, including generating queries 448 andsending them to event data store 165. Similarly, context determiner 425performs similar operations to those of context determiner 410, such asreceiving the events from responses 450 and determining the eventcontext from such events.

Response generator 430 may generate a report based on the event contextsof the returned events. In some instances, the response generator 430then generates a response 452 that includes the report, and sends theresponse to third party service 185. However, in many cases the thirdparty service 185 may want an answer to a specific question rather thana full report. In such an embodiment, response generator 430 may thenextract information from the report that will answer the specificquestion that the third party service 185 is interested in. Morespecifically, response generator 430 may determine a subset ofinformation (referred to simply as content) from the report that isresponsive to the content request included in the original request 445from the third party service 185. Response generator 430 may thengenerate a response 452 that includes the content that is responsive tothe content request and send that response 452 to the third partyservice 185.

Third party services 185 may issue many different types of contentrequests. Content requests may be requests for information associatedwith a particular context type, information associated with specificfields, information associated with only particular types of events,most common event contexts, most relevant event contexts, and so on. Oneexample content request is a request to identify a particular user or aparticular device. Responsive to a request to identify a particularuser, response generator 430 may determine event contexts that areassociated with an identity context type, and provide those eventcontexts in the response. Alternatively, response generator 430 maydetermine a most common identity event context or a most relevantidentity event context and return just that event context in theresponse 452.

Responsive to a request to identify a particular device, responsegenerator 430 may determine event contexts that are associated with anendpoint context type, and provide those event contexts in the response.Alternatively, response generator 430 may determine a most commonendpoint event context or a most relevant endpoint event context andreturn just that event context in the response 452.

In another example, the third party service 185 may issue a request 445asking for all of the information that can be determined about aparticular machine or individual. From the generated report, theresponse generator 430 could return a response indicating the identitiesof all individuals that used the machine, IP addresses that the machinewas assigned in a particular period, incoming and outgoing messages fromthe machine, and so on. This information could then be sent to thirdparty service 185 in a response 452 that is formatted as a machineconsumable result.

In another example, a third party service 185 may issue a request forthe most relevant event context (or most relevant event contexts)returned by a particular query. To determine a most relevant eventcontext, response generator 430 may determine a set of most common eventcontexts. From the set of most common event contexts, response generator430 may then compare the time stamps (start and/or end times) associatedwith each of these event contexts. Response generator 430 thendetermines that the event context that is a most common event contextthat is closest in time to an initial queried time period (e.g., aspecified point in time or time range).

In one embodiment, response generator determines a threshold distance intime from the initial queried time period (e.g., 1 hour from the queriedtime period, 30 minutes from the queried time period, 10 minutes fromthe queried time period, 1 day from the queried time period, etc.). Inone embodiment, only those event contexts having a time stamp that arewithin the threshold distance in time are considered for the mostrelevant event context.

In one embodiment, a third party service 185 may issue a request thatincludes a log entry. The request may additionally specify a source typeof the log entry. Alternatively, event searcher 420 may analyze theprovided log entry to determine a source type associated with that logentry. Once the source type is determined, event searcher 420 may invokea parser to parse the log entry to identify fields and field values ofthe log entry. Once the fields and field values are determined, theparser may determine field types to assign to specific fields of the logentry based on the associated source type. Event searcher 420 maydetermine a context definition associated with the log entry based onthe associated source type, and may then issue one or more queries 448using the field values of the fields specified in the contextdefinition. The subsequent steps that are performed correspond to thepreviously described steps performed by user interface 175, and includedetermining event contexts of returned events, issuing one or morerecursive searches using the field values of returned events, generatinga report based on the event contexts, and returning at least a portionof the report in a response 452 to the third party service 185.

Third party services 185 may expect results to be returned in aspecified format. In one embodiment, each third party service is treatedas a data source. Accordingly, the ECMS may generate a data sourceobject 235 for a third party service 185, and that data source objectmay specify a source type associated with that third party service. Thesource type associated with a third party service may specify the formatto use for responses to the third party service 185. Accordingly,response generator 430 may determine a source type associated with thethird party service 185 that a request is received from based on, forexample, an IP address, a port number, and/or other informationidentifying the source of the request and/or how the request wasreceived.

Once the source type associated with a third party service 185 isdetermined, response generator 430 may determine the format to be usedfor responses 452 to that third party service 185. For example, thesource type may indicate that responses are to be provided as PDFdocuments, a CSV files, a HTML documents, as email messages, as textmessages, and so on. The source type may also specify specific fields toinclude in the response, locations of those fields in the response,headers to use, a communication protocol to use for sending the response452, and so on. Response generator 430 formats the response according tothe determined format, and sends the response 452 to the third partyservice 185.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of sample configuration data 238 for an eventcontext management system. The configuration data 238 may be one or moreconfiguration files, a configuration service, a configuration store, aconfiguration database, or other arrangement of configuration data. Inthe example of a configuration service, components off the ECMS mayquery the configuration service for configuration information such asdata source information, source type information, context definitions,field type information, and so on. Alternatively, components of the ECMSmay query the configuration service for a complete copy of theconfiguration data, and may store that copy of the configuration datalocally. In one embodiment, no configuration service is implemented, anda copy of the configuration data 238 is stored at each component of theECMS. In some embodiments, all components of the ECMS contain copies ofthe same configuration data. Alternatively, different components of theECMS may contain configuration data with different information. Forexample, a listener 120 may contain just the portions of configurationdata that are relevant to the listener 120, while the indexer 150 maycontain just the portions of the configuration data that are relevant tothe indexer 150.

In one embodiment, the configuration data 238 is implemented as one ormore text files having a basic structure composed of sections,properties and values. In one embodiment, the configuration data 238 isimplemented as one or more INI files. Alternatively, the configurationdata 238 may be implemented as one or more extensible markup language(XML) files, Javascript object notation (JSON) files, YAML files, commaseparated values (CSV) files, or other types of configuration files.

Another example network context definition may specify the fields ofsource IP address, destination IP address, network address translation(NAT) source IP address, NAT destination IP address, and a rule name.

In one embodiment, configuration data 238 includes entries for sourcetypes 535 and entries for context definitions 540, 545, 550, 555, 560,565. Configuration data 238 may also include many other types ofinformation, such as locations of the data lake and event data store,locations of the listener and indexer, and so on.

As shown an example source type 535 may include a title, which mayindicate a class of data source, such as a Palo Alto Networks® firewall,an InfoBox® DNS firewall, a particular type of DNS server, and so on. Asource type 535 may additionally include source identifying metadata,which may include parameters such as IP addresses, port values, URLs,file names, directory names, host names, and so forth. The sourceidentifying information may be used by listeners to determine whatsource type to assign to a data source based on the source identifyingmetadata associated with that data source.

A source type 535 may additionally include information on a log formatassociated with that source type. The log format information may be usedto perform operations such as breaking event data into discrete logentries, parsing discrete log entries, determining additional transformsto use to further parse discrete log entries, and so on.

The log format in a source type will indicate each of the fieldsincluded in that log format. A source type 535 may additionally includeinformation on fields of that log format that are to be assignedspecific source types as well as the specific field types to assign tothose fields. For example, fields may be assigned field types such as“IP address”, “port”, “user ID”, “host ID”, and so on. The fields thatare assigned field types will be used to index events associated with aparticular source type into the event data store.

A source type 535 may additionally include one or more contextdefinitions. A source type 535 may include a complete contextdefinition, including a specification of each field that is to be usedas a link key to link together events. Alternatively, a source type 535may include a context definition ID, and the context definition may bespecified elsewhere in the configuration data 238. This may enablemultiple different source types to reference the same contextdefinitions without containing multiple copies of those contextdefinitions in the configuration data.

Configuration data 238 may contain multiple different contextdefinitions 540-565, which may be grouped according to context type 505,510, 515, 520, 525, 530. A context type is a class of context (e.g.,data context, application context, threat context, etc.), and thecontext definitions 540-565 represent particular instances of aparticular context type. A non-exhaustive list of context types includesan identity context type 505, an endpoint context type 510, a networkcontext type 515, an application context type 520, a data context type525 and a threat context type 530. Each context type may includemultiple different context definitions. For example, identity contexttype 505 includes multiple identity context definitions 540, endpointcontext type 510 includes multiple endpoint context definitions 545,network context type 515 includes multiple network context definitions550, application context type 520 includes multiple application contextdefinitions 555, data context type includes multiple data contextdefinitions 560, and threat context type 530 includes multiple threatcontext definitions 565.

Identity context definitions 540 identify who the persons and/ormachines are that are involved in events. Each identity contextdefinition 540 is usable to associate users to at least one of devices,locations or aliases. Identity context definitions 540 will generallyinclude specified fields of a user field, an internet protocol (IP)address field and a media access control (MAC) address field. Someidentity context definitions 540 will include a source IP address and adestination IP address, a source NAT IP address, a destination NAT IPaddress, and/or other fields.

Each endpoint context definition 545 is usable to describe a device on anetwork. Information that describes the device may include informationon software running on the device, a state of the device, a device type,and/or other asset information about the device. Endpoint contextdefinitions 545 will generally include an IP address field and a hostfield, and may additionally include other fields.

Each network context definition 550 is usable to describe traffic acrossa network. The network context definition 550 may identify a networkzone, a physical location, a geolocation of devices sending andreceiving traffic, and so on. Network context definitions 550 willgenerally include at least a source IP address field, a destination IPaddress field and a port field.

Each application context definition 555 is usable to describe at leastone of a service request or a service response. The application contextdefinitions 555 provide, for example, information on services andapplications that are being accessed from machines on a network.Application context definitions 555 will generally include at least anIP address field and a host field.

Each data context definition 560 is usable to describe content ofnetwork traffic. Data context definitions 560 describe, for example, atype of data and a volume of data that is transmitted on the network.Data context definitions 560 typically include at least a transmittedbytes field, a data encoding field and a data characterization field.

Each threat context definition 565 is usable to describe a networkthreat detected by a threat detector. Examples of threat detectorsinclude an intrusion detection system (IDS), a security event andinformation management (SIEM) system, a user behavior analytics (UBA)system, an endpoint monitor that monitors suspicious files and processes(e.g., a malware or antivirus detection system), a configurationcompliance scanner, a vulnerability scanner, and so on.

FIGS. 6-15 are flow diagrams showing various methods performed by anECMS system to receive log data, generate and store events, and searchevents. The methods may be performed by a processing logic that maycomprise hardware (e.g., circuitry, dedicated logic, programmable logic,microcode, etc.), software (e.g., instructions run on a processingdevice to perform hardware simulation), or a combination thereof.Various embodiments may be performed by one or more computing devicesthat make up an ECMS (e.g., computing devices executing a listener 120,a data lake 130, an indexer 150, an event data store 165, a userinterface 175 and/or a service interface 178).

FIG. 6 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method 600 of storing araw data stream of log data into a data store. In one embodiment, method600 is implemented by a listener (e.g., listener 120 of FIG. 2)executing on a computing device. The raw data stream may correspond toraw data stream 210 of FIG. 2 and the data store may correspond to datalake 130 of FIGS. 1-2. At block 605 of method 600, processing logicreceives a raw data stream including log data from a data source.

At block 608, processing logic identifies the data source that sent theraw data stream. The data source may be identified based on how the rawdata stream arrived at the processing device (e.g., whether a push orpull data transfer model was used, whether the raw data stream wasretrieved by accessing a URL, a port at which the raw data stream wasreceived, a protocol used to transmit the raw data stream, etc.) and thesender of the raw data stream (e.g., identification of an agentexecuting on a remote device that sent the raw data stream, an IPaddress of a remote device, and so on).

At block 610, processing logic determines whether a data source objectassociated with the identified data source is existent. This may includequerying a data store such as an event data store that contains datasource objects. If a data source object exists for the data source, themethod proceeds to block 635. If a data source object has not yet beencreated for the data source, the method continues to block 615.

At block 615, processing logic creates a data source object. In oneembodiment, the data source object is created by issuing a command tocreate the data source object to a database management system (DBMS)that manages a data store that stores data source objects (e.g., to anevent data store). A data source object ID (e.g., a UUID) may beassigned to the new data source and may be returned to the processinglogic.

At block 618, processing logic creates a raw data stream record for theraw data stream from the data source. The raw data stream record mayinclude metadata (e.g., a title) indicating the source object ID of thedata source object created for the data source. For example, the rawdata stream record may be labeled as “UUID-raw”.

At block 620, processing logic attempts to identify a source type forthe raw data stream from metadata associated with the raw data streamand/or the data source. For example, the same data that was used touniquely identify the data source may also be used to determine a sourcetype of that data source. This determination may be made by comparingthe metadata with one or more source type entries included inconfiguration data.

At block 625, processing logic determines whether the source type wasidentified for the raw data stream. If the source type was identified,the method continues to block 630. Otherwise the method proceeds toblock 635.

At block 630, processing logic assigns the determined source type to thedata source object created for the data source that the raw data streamwas received from. This may include sending a message to a data storethat contains the data source object to cause the data source object tobe updated in the data store. At block 635, processing logic writes theraw data stream from the data source to the raw data stream record. Thismay include breaking the raw data stream up into multiple blocks (e.g.,10 kb blocks), tagging the raw data stream (or the blocks) with a timestamp and/or other value (e.g., a sequence number) usable to order theentries in the raw data stream record, and/or tagging the raw datastream (or blocks) with a source type and/or source object ID. In oneembodiment, writing the raw data stream into the raw data stream recordincluded sending an instruction to a data store interface (e.g., a DBMS)to cause the data store interface to write the raw data stream to thedata stream record.

FIG. 7 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method 700 of generatinga corrected data stream from a raw data stream and storing the correcteddata stream in a data store. In one embodiment, method 700 is performedby an indexer (e.g., indexer 150 of FIG. 3) executing on a processingdevice. At block 705 of method 700, processing logic reads log data froma raw data stream record. This may include reading one or more messagesand/or blocks containing log data from the raw data stream record.

At block 710, processing logic determines whether a source type is knownfor the log data. In some instances, the source type may be indicated inthe log data itself (e.g., the log data may have been tagged with thesource type by a listener). Alternatively, or additionally, the log datamay have been tagged with a source object ID (or a label from which asource object ID can be determined). In such an embodiment, theprocessing logic may determine the source type from the source object ID(e.g., by issuing a query to a data store that contains the sourceobject). If the source type is known, the method proceeds to block 725.If the source object is not known, the method continues to block 715.

At block 715, processing logic analyzes the raw log data from the rawdata stream record. This may include analyzing the log data to identifyfields in the log data, to identify a data type (e.g., whether the datais formatted in an XML format, a CSV format, etc.), and/or to identifyother information about the raw log data. The determined information maythen be compared against the data formats defined in multiple differentsource types. At block 718, processing logic determines a source typefrom the analysis. If a match is found between the determinedinformation and the data format of a source type, then the log data maybe identified as being associated with that source type.

At block 720, processing logic then assigns the identified source typeto the data source object. In one embodiment, processing logic issues acommand to a data store that stores the data source object to cause thatdata store to add the source type to the data source object.

At block 725, processing logic determines a log format of the log datain the messages and/or blocks from the raw data stream record based onthe source type associated with that log data. This may includeperforming a lookup in configuration data that includes the source type.The source type may indicate the format of log entries associated withthat source type.

At block 730, processing logic determines boundaries of discrete logentries included in the messages or blocks from the raw data streamrecord. At block 735, processing logic separates the messages or blocksinto discrete log entries based on the determined boundaries.Additionally, processing logic may join together portions of log entriesfrom adjoining messages or blocks. For example, a log entry may spanmultiple messages, in which a start of the log entry may be at the endof a first message and the end of the log entry may be at the beginningof a second message. Such a log entry may be recreated from the two logentry portions.

At block 740, processing logic creates a corrected data stream recordfor the discrete log entries. Alternatively, a corrected data streamrecord may already have been created for the discrete log entries from aparticular source. The corrected data stream record may include metadatathat indicates the source object ID of the data source that originatedthe discrete log entries and/or a source type associated with that datasource.

At block 745, processing logic generates a corrected data stream fromthe separated messages. The corrected data stream includes the discretelog entries. At block 750, processing logic then writes the correcteddata stream to the corrected data stream record in the data store.

FIG. 8 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method 800 of generatingevents from discrete log entries in a first data store and storing theevents in a second data store. In one embodiment, method 800 isperformed by an indexer (e.g., indexer 150 of FIG. 3) running on aprocessing device. At block 805 of method 800, processing logic reads adiscrete log entry from a corrected data stream record in a data store(e.g., in a data lake).

At block 807, processing logic determines a log format of the discretelog entry based on a source type associated with the corrected datastream record from which the discrete log entry was read. At block 808,processing logic parses the discrete log entry based on the log formatof the discrete log entry. By parsing the discrete log entry, processinglogic is able to identify each of the fields in the discrete log entryand the field values of those fields.

At block 810, processing logic determines whether the discrete log entryhas been successfully parsed. If the discrete log entry has not beensuccessfully parsed, the method proceeds to block 815. If the discretelog entry has been successfully parsed, the method continues to block825. In one embodiment, the operations of block 810 are performed afterblock 835 rather than after block 808. Alternatively, the operations ofblock 810 may be performed both after block 810 and after block 835.

At block 815, processing logic creates an unparsed data stream recordhaving metadata (e.g., a label) indicating a source object ID of thedata source object that generated the log entry in a first data store.Alternatively, the unparsed data stream record may have previously beengenerated. In one embodiment, the unparsed data stream record has alabel of “UUID-unparsed”, where UUID is the UUID assigned to the datasource object generated for the data source object from which the logentry was initially received.

At block 818, processing logic creates an unparsed data stream thatincludes the discrete log entry that was not successfully parsed. Theunparsed data stream may additionally include other log entries from aparticular data source that were not successfully parsed. At block 820,processing logic writes the unparsed data stream to the unparsed datastream record.

In some instances, the source type alone is insufficient to fully parsethe discrete log entry. At block 825, processing logic determineswhether the discrete log entry is fully parsable using the source type.If the log entry is fully parsable from the source type, the methodproceeds to block 845. If the discrete log entry is not fully parsablefrom the source type, the method continues to block 830.

At block 830, processing logic determines one or more additionaltransforms that are usable to further parse the discrete log entry. Atblock 835, processing logic further parses the discrete log entry usingthe identified transform or transforms. In some instances particulartransforms may refer to still additional transforms. Accordingly,multiple layers of transforms may be used to fully parse a log entry.

At block 845, processing logic identifies a subset of the fields. Theidentified subset of fields will be used to index an event generatedfrom the discrete log entry into a second data store (e.g., into anevent database). Additionally, the subset of fields may later be used aslink keys to link together events during searches.

At block 850, processing logic determines a field type of each of theidentified fields in the subset. The field types to be assigned to thefields in the subset are identified in the source type. Accordingly, thesource type may be used to determine the field types to assign to thosefields. At block 855, processing logic assigns the determined fieldtypes to the fields in the subset.

In some embodiments, processing logic generates an event for thediscrete log entry. The event may include the original text and/or otherdata from the discrete log entry. Additionally, the event may include adictionary or list of key value pairs, where the keys correspond tofields and the values correspond to field values. In one embodiment, thedictionary or list of key value pairs includes just the fields that havebeen assigned field types. Alternatively, the dictionary or list mayinclude all of the fields in the event, or a portion of the fields thatis greater than the subset that has been assigned field types.

At block 860, processing logic writes the event to the second data store(e.g., to an event database). In some embodiments, processing logicwrites multiple entries or copies of the event into the second datastore. In one embodiment, processing logic writes a separate entry ofthe event into the second data store for each field that has beenassigned a field type. Additionally, one or more entries of the eventmay be written into the second data store for each partitioned timeperiod associated with the event. For each instance off the event thatis written to the second data store, that instance may be indexed usingthe field value of one of the fields that has an assigned field type.The assigned field type may dictate a particular table or tables in thesecond data store that a particular instance of the event is indexed in.

FIG. 9 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method 900 of storingcontext definitions in configuration data for an event contextmanagement system. In one embodiment, at least some operations of method900 are performed by a user interface (e.g., user interface 175) and/orservice interface executing on a processing device. Operations may alsobe performed by other components of an ECMS.

At block 905 of method 900, processing logic receives one or morecontext definitions. The context definitions may be constructed by auser using a graphical user interface presented to the user. Forexample, the user may select a particular source type, which may cause aset of fields to be displayed. The user may select one or more of thosefields to be used for a new context definition. Additionally, the userinterface may present a list of available context types, and the usermay select a particular context type to create a new context definitionfor.

In another embodiment, a user or service may generate a contextdefinition offline, where the context definition includes a source type,a context type and a list of specified field values. A user computingdevice or service computing device may then transmit the contextdefinition to processing logic.

At block 910, processing logic writes the received context definition(or multiple received context definitions) into configuration data. Atblock 915, the configuration data is written to a configuration dataservice or configuration data store. The configuration data (or portionsof the configuration data) may be propagated to each of the systems inan ECMS. These systems (e.g., a listener, an indexer, a data lake, anevent database, etc.) may restart, and upon restarting may implement anupdated configuration as represented in the configuration data. Forexample, after being reset the systems would be able to process eventsusing a new context definition. Similar changes may be made to updateservice types, add new service types, modify existing contextdefinitions, add new context types, and so on.

At block 915, processing logic writes events to an event database asdescribed herein above. These events may be written to the eventdatabase based on current configuration data. At block 920, processinglogic receives a modified version of an existing context definition.Alternatively, or additionally, processing logic may receive a newcontext definition. The new or modified context definition is receivedafter events have been written to the event database.

At block 925, processing logic replaces a preexisting context definitionwith the modified version of the context definition and/or adds the newcontext definition to the configuration data. The configuration data isseparate and distinct from a schema of the event database. Accordingly,the configuration data may be modified (e.g., the context definitionsmay be changed) in the configuration data without modifying a schema ofthe event database. The components of the ECMS may be reset, and maythen implement the updated configuration data. New searches that areperformed after the reset may apply the new or modified contextdefinition.

Context definitions define fields to use as link keys for searchingevents. Accordingly, the link keys or connections between events may bemodified at any time merely by updating the configuration data, andwithout updating a schema of the event database. This makes the eventdatabase very flexible, and provides users with an ability to change howevents are linked in searches at any time without imposing timeconsuming updates to the event database.

FIG. 10 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method 1000 ofperforming a recursive search of events in a data store based on fieldsdefined in one or more context definitions. Method 1000 may be performedby a processing device executing a user interface and/or a serviceinterface (e.g., user interface 175 and/or service interface 178 of FIG.4).

In one embodiment, at block 1005 of method 1000 processing logicreceives a query including a field value and a time period. The querymay additionally specify a field type associated with the received fieldvalue. The query may be received by a user interface (e.g., a webserver) from a user or by a service interface (e.g., a web server) froma third party service.

At block 1010, processing logic performs a first search of a data store(e.g., of an event database) using the first field value. The firstsearch returns results that include an initial set of events having theprovided time period and at least one field having the provided fieldvalue.

At block 1015, processing logic selects an unsearched event from theinitial set of events that were returned by the first search. At block1020, processing logic determines a source type associated with theselected event. The source type may be indicated in the event.Alternatively, the event may indicate a data source ID, and the datasource ID may be used to look up the source type.

At block 1025, processing logic determines a context definitionassociated with the source type. Some source types might be associatedwith multiple context definitions. For such source types, each of thecontext definitions may be determined.

At block 1030, processing logic determines fields of the event that arespecified in the determined context definition. At block 1035,processing logic selects an unsearched field of the selected event fromthe fields specified in the context definition. At block 1040,processing logic performs an additional search of the data store usingthe field value of the selected field to identify additional events.

At block 1045, processing logic determines whether there are any fieldsof the event that are specified in the context definition (or multiplecontext definitions) and that have not yet been searched. If suchunsearched fields are identified, the method returns to block 1035, andone of the unsearched fields is selected. An additional search is thenperformed on the field value of the newly selected unsearched field atblock 1040. The additional search returns additional events that may ormay not have been included in the initial set of events. This loopcontinues until additional searches have been performed for allspecified fields off all determined context definitions associated withthe source type.

If at block 1045 a determination is made that all fields specified inthe context definition (or multiple context definitions) have beensearched, processing logic continues to block 1050. At block 1050,processing logic determines whether there are any unsearched events fromthe initial set of events that have not been used to perform additionalsearches. If any such unsearched events are identified, the methodreturns to block 1050 and a new unsearched event is selected. Ifsearches have been performed using all of the events in the initial set,the method continues to block 1055.

At block 1055, processing logic aggregates information from the initialset of events returned from the initial search and the additional eventsreturned from the additional searches. This may include creating areport that includes event contexts based on these events. At block1060, processing logic generates a response that includes the aggregatedinformation. At block 1065, processing logic sends the response to theclient from which the initial query or request was received (e.g., tothe user device of a user or service computing device executing a thirdparty service). The method then ends.

FIG. 11 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method 1100 of searchingevents in a data store based on fields specified in a contextdefinition. Method 1100 may be performed, for example, by a computingdevice executing a user interface and/or a service interface.

At block 1105 of method 1100 processing logic receives a query includinga field value and a time period. The query may also indicate a fieldtype associated with the field value. At block 1110, processing logicperforms a first search of a data store using the provided field valueto identify a set of events having the time period and at least onefield with the field value.

At block 1120, processing logic determines a first subset of the eventsthat are associated with a context definition. At block 1130, processinglogic determines fields that are specified by the context definition. Atblock 1135, processing logic determines, for events in the first subset,field values of one or more fields specified in the context definition.At block 1140, processing logic generates a report based on the fieldvalues of the one or more fields specified in the context definitionfrom the events in the first subset. In one embodiment, processing logicdetermines event contexts for each of the events, wherein the eventcontexts are based on the field values of fields specified in thecontext definition. Processing logic may then group information in thereport based on the context definition and the event contexts. At block1145, processing logic generates a response to the query that includesat least a portion of the report.

FIGS. 12A-12B together show a flow chart of one embodiment for a method1200 of performing a search of events in a data store based on fieldsspecified in context definitions. Method 1200 may be performed by aprocessing device executing, for example, a user interface and/or aservice interface.

At block 1205 of method 1200, processing logic receives a queryincluding a field value and a time period. The query may additionallyinclude a field type associated with the field value. Additionally, thequery may include multiple field values, one or more of which may belabeled with a field type.

At block 1210, processing logic performs the operations of blocks 1010through 1050 of method 1000 described with reference to FIG. 10. Atblock 1215, processing logic selects an event from an initial set ofevents or additional events that were returned at block 1210. At block1220, processing logic determines a source type associated with theselected event.

At block 1225, processing logic determines a context definitionassociated with event based on the source type. At block 1230,processing logic determines fields off the selected event that arespecified in the context definition. At block 1235, processing logicdetermines an event context for the event based on the field values ofthe fields of the selected event that are specified in the contextdefinition.

At block 1240, processing logic determines whether event contexts havebeen generated for all of the events that were returned at block 1210.If event contexts have not been generated for all of the events, themethod returns to block 1215 and another event is selected. If eventcontexts have been generated for all of the events, the method continuesto block 1245.

At block 1245, processing logic determines a subset of the events fromthe initial set of events and the additional events (e.g., a subset ofthe events returned at block 1210) that share a context definition. Atblock 1250, processing logic aggregates the event context informationfrom the subset of events for the context definition.

At block 1255, processing logic determines whether all of the contextdefinitions associated with events returned at block 1210 have beenconsidered. If not all context definitions have been considered, themethod returns to block 1245, and another subset of events that haveanother context definition are determined. If all context definitionsassociated with events returned at block 1210 have been considered, themethod proceeds to block 1260.

At block 1260, processing logic selects a context type. At block 1262,processing logic determines context definitions associated with eventsreturned at block 1210 that share a context type. At block 1265,processing logic generates a report section that combines the aggregatedevent context information for each of the context definitions sharingthe context type.

At block 1270, processing logic determines whether report sections havebeen generated for each of the context types. If report sections havenot been generated for all of the context types, the method returns toblock 1260 and another context type is selected. If report sections havebeen generated for all of the context types, the method continues toblock 1272.

At block 1272, processing logic generates a report that includes all ofthe generated report sections. At block 1275, processing logic generatesa response to the initial query that includes at least a portion of thereport. At block 1280, processing logic sends the report to a clientthat the query was received from.

FIG. 13 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method 1300 ofaggregating event context information. In one embodiment, method 1300 isperformed by a processing device executing a user interface and/or aservice interface. In one embodiment, method 1300 is performed at block1055 of method 1000 and/or at block 1250 of method 1200.

At block 1305 of method 1300, processing logic determines, for an eventincluded in a report, a field that caused the event to be included inthe report. At block 1310, for an event, processing logic labels thedetermined field that caused that event to be included in the report asbeing a cause for inclusion of the event in the report. This may beperformed for some or all of the events in the report. Some events maybe included in the report because of multiple fields. For example, anevent may have been returned from multiple recursive searches that wereautomatically performed. In such an instance, each of the fields thatcontributed to the event being included in the report may be indicated.

At block 1320, processing logic determines that a particular eventcontext associated with a context type has multiple instances. At block1330, processing logic deletes copies of the event context so that onlya single copy off the event context remains. At block 1335, processinglogic indicates in the report section for the context type the number ofinstances of the event context that were determined. This process may beperformed for each event context included in a report.

At block 1340, processing logic determines a most frequent event contextassociated with a particular context type. At block 1345, processinglogic identifies the determined event context as being the most frequentevent context in the context type. This process may be performed foreach off the context types.

FIG. 14 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method 1400 of searchingfor content that satisfies a content request in a query from a service.In one embodiment, method 1400 is performed by a processing deviceexecuting a service interface.

At block 1405 of method 1400, processing logic receives a queryincluding a field value, a time period and a content request. The querymay additionally include a field type associated with the field valueand/or may include multiple fields values. At block 1410, processinglogic performs a first search of a data store (e.g., an event database)using the field value to identify a set of events having the time periodand at least one field having the field value.

At block 1420, processing logic determines a first subset of the eventsthat are associated with a context definition. At block 1430, processinglogic determines fields that are specified by the context definition. Atblock 1435, processing logic determines, for events in the first subset,field values of one or more fields specified in the context definition.At block 1440, processing logic determines, from field values of the oneor more fields specified in the first context definition, content thatsatisfies the content request. At block 1445, processing logic generatesa response to the query that includes the content that is responsive tothe content request. At block 1450, processing logic sends the responseto the service.

FIG. 15 is a flow chart of one embodiment for a method 1500 ofdetermining content that is responsive to a content request in a queryfrom a service. In one embodiment, method 1500 is performed by aprocessing device executing a service interface.

At block 1505 of method 1500, processing logic receives a queryincluding a field value (or multiple field values), a time period and acontent request. At block 1510, processing logic performs the operationsof blocks 1210-1272 of method 1200 described with reference to FIGS.12A-12B. An output of block 1510 may be a report that includes eventcontexts generated from events returned from an initial search and oneor more additional searches that were performed automatically based oncontext definitions and results of the initial search.

At block 1515, processing logic determines content that is responsive tothe context request from the report. Depending on the nature of thecontent request, one or more different operations may be performed todetermine the content. Additionally, the information included in thecontent may vary depending on the nature of the content request.

In one embodiment, the content request is for information associatedwith a particular context type. For example, a request may be forcontent associated with a network context type, content associated withan identity context type, content associated with an endpoint contexttype, content associated with an application context type, contentassociated with a data context type, content associated with a threatcontext type, and so on. In such an embodiment, at block 1520 processinglogic determines that the content that will be responsive to the contentrequest is the event contexts associated with a particular requestedcontext type.

In one embodiment, the content request is for field values of particularfields of events. In such an embodiment, at block 1525 processing logicdetermines that the content that will be responsive to the contentrequest is one or more field values of the particular field (or fields)specified in the content request. These fields may be fields that arealso specified in a context definition.

In one embodiment, the content request is for a most common and/or mostrelevant event context. In such an embodiment, at block 1530 processinglogic determines the most common and/or the most relevant event context.At block 1535 processing logic then determines that the content that isresponsive to the content request is the determined most relevant and/ormost common event context. The content request may additionally specifythat the most relevant or most common event context associated with aparticular context type is desired. In such an embodiment, only eventcontexts from that particular context type would be considered in thedetermination of the most relevant or the most common event context.

In some embodiments, a content request may specify that one or more mostcommon field values are desired. These may be most common field valuesthat are for one or more specified fields, for one or more specifiedfield types specified in a context definition, for one or more specifiedcontext types, or a combination thereof. At block 1540, processing logicdetermines the most common field values of one or more fields. Thesefields would be fields that are specified in one or more contextdefinitions in embodiments. At block 1545, processing logic would thendetermine the most common field values to be the content that satisfiesthe content request.

At block 1550, processing logic determines a source type associated witha service from which the query was received. At block 1555, processinglogic determines a response format based on the source type. At block1560, processing logic then generates a response that includes thecontent. The generated response would have the determined responseformat. At block 1565, processing logic then sends the generatedresponse to the service from which the initial query was received.

FIG. 16 illustrates a diagrammatic representation of a machine in theexample form of a computing device 1600 within which a set ofinstructions, for causing the machine to perform any one or more of themethodologies discussed herein, may be executed. In alternativeembodiments, the machine may be connected (e.g., networked) to othermachines in a Local Area Network (LAN), an intranet, an extranet, or theInternet. The machine may operate in the capacity of a server or aclient machine in a client-server network environment, or as a peermachine in a peer-to-peer (or distributed) network environment. Themachine may be a personal computer (PC), a tablet computer, a set-topbox (STB), a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a cellular telephone, aweb appliance, a server, a network router, switch or bridge, or anymachine capable of executing a set of instructions (sequential orotherwise) that specify actions to be taken by that machine. Further,while only a single machine is illustrated, the term “machine” shallalso be taken to include any collection of machines (e.g., computers)that individually or jointly execute a set (or multiple sets) ofinstructions to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussedherein.

The example computing device 1600 includes a processing device 1602, amain memory 1604 (e.g., read-only memory (ROM), flash memory, dynamicrandom access memory (DRAM) such as synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) or RambusDRAM (RDRAM), etc.), a static memory 1606 (e.g., flash memory, staticrandom access memory (SRAM), etc.), and a secondary memory (e.g., a datastorage device 1618), which communicate with each other via a bus 1630.

Processing device 1602 represents one or more general-purpose processorssuch as a microprocessor, central processing unit, or the like. Moreparticularly, the processing device 1602 may be a complex instructionset computing (CISC) microprocessor, reduced instruction set computing(RISC) microprocessor, very long instruction word (VLIW) microprocessor,processor implementing other instruction sets, or processorsimplementing a combination of instruction sets. Processing device 1602may also be one or more special-purpose processing devices such as anapplication specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a field programmablegate array (FPGA), a digital signal processor (DSP), network processor,or the like. Processing device 1602 is configured to execute theprocessing logic (instructions 1622) for performing the operations andsteps discussed herein.

The computing device 1600 may further include a network interface device1608. The computing device 1600 also may include a video display unit1610 (e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a cathode ray tube (CRT)),an alphanumeric input device 1612 (e.g., a keyboard), a cursor controldevice 1614 (e.g., a mouse), and a signal generation device 1616 (e.g.,a speaker).

The data storage device 1618 may include a machine-readable storagemedium (or more specifically a computer-readable storage medium) 1628 onwhich is stored one or more sets of instructions 1622 embodying any oneor more of the methodologies or functions described herein. Theinstructions 1622 may also reside, completely or at least partially,within the main memory 1604 and/or within the processing device 1602during execution thereof by the computer system 1600, the main memory1604 and the processing device 1602 also constituting computer-readablestorage media.

The computer-readable storage medium 1628 may also be used to store oneor more of a user interface 175, a service interface 178, a listener 120and an indexer 150 (as described with reference to FIGS. 1-4), and/or asoftware library containing methods that call a user interface 175, aservice interface 178, a listener 120 and/or an indexer 150. While thecomputer-readable storage medium 1628 is shown in an example embodimentto be a single medium, the term “computer-readable storage medium”should be taken to include a single medium or multiple media (e.g., acentralized or distributed database, and/or associated caches andservers) that store the one or more sets of instructions. The term“computer-readable storage medium” shall also be taken to include anymedium other than a carrier wave that is capable of storing or encodinga set of instructions for execution by the machine and that cause themachine to perform any one or more of the methodologies describedherein. The term “computer-readable storage medium” shall accordingly betaken to include, but not be limited to, solid-state memories, andoptical and magnetic media.

Some portions of the detailed description have been presented in termsof algorithms and symbolic representations of operations on data bitswithin a computer memory. These algorithmic descriptions andrepresentations are the means used by those skilled in the dataprocessing arts to most effectively convey the substance of their workto others skilled in the art. An algorithm is here, and generally,conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of steps leading to a desiredresult. The steps are those requiring physical manipulations of physicalquantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take theform of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored,transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It hasproven convenient at times, principally for reasons of common usage, torefer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters,terms, numbers, or the like.

It should be borne in mind, however, that all of these and similar termsare to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and aremerely convenient labels applied to these quantities. Unlessspecifically stated otherwise, as apparent from the followingdiscussion, it is appreciated that throughout the description,discussions utilizing terms such as “receiving”, “sending”,“determining”, “identifying”, “parsing”, “assigning”, “writing”, or thelike, refer to the actions and processes of a computer system, orsimilar electronic computing device, that manipulates and transformsdata represented as physical (electronic) quantities within the computersystem's registers and memories into other data similarly represented asphysical quantities within the computer system memories or registers orother such information storage, transmission or display devices.

Embodiments of the present invention also relate to an apparatus forperforming the operations herein. This apparatus may be speciallyconstructed for the discussed purposes, or it may comprise a generalpurpose computer system selectively programmed by a computer programstored in the computer system. Such a computer program may be stored ina computer readable storage medium, such as, but not limited to, anytype of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, CD-ROMs, andmagnetic-optical disks, read-only memories (ROMs), random accessmemories (RAMs), EPROMs, EEPROMs, magnetic disk storage media, opticalstorage media, flash memory devices, other type of machine-accessiblestorage media, or any type of media suitable for storing electronicinstructions, each coupled to a computer system bus.

It is to be understood that the above description is intended to beillustrative, and not restrictive. Many other embodiments will beapparent to those of skill in the art upon reading and understanding theabove description. Although the present invention has been describedwith reference to specific example embodiments, it will be recognizedthat the invention is not limited to the embodiments described, but canbe practiced with modification and alteration within the spirit andscope of the appended claims. Accordingly, the specification anddrawings are to be regarded in an illustrative sense rather than arestrictive sense. The scope of the invention should, therefore, bedetermined with reference to the appended claims, along with the fullscope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: receiving a query from aservice, the query comprising a first field value, a time period and acontent request; performing, by a processing device, a first search of adata store using the first field value to identify a plurality of eventshaving the time period and at least one field that comprises the firstfield value; determining, by the processing device, a first subset ofthe plurality of events associated with a first context definition;determining a plurality of fields specified in the first contextdefinition; determining, for events in the first subset, field values ofone or more fields specified in the first context definition;determining, from the field values of the one or more fields specifiedin the first context definition, content that satisfies the contentrequest; and generating a response to the query that comprises thecontent.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining afirst source type associated with the first subset of the plurality ofevents; and determining that the first source type is associated withthe first context definition, wherein the first context definitionidentifies the first plurality of fields that are pertinent to contextof a particular event.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the firstcontext definition has a first context type, the method furthercomprising: determining a second subset of the plurality of eventsassociated with a second context definition having a second contexttype; determining a second plurality of fields specified in the secondcontext definition; determining, for events in the second subset, fieldvalues of one or more fields specified in the second context definition;and determining, from the field values of the one or more fieldsspecified in the second context definition, additional content thatsatisfies the content request, wherein the response to the querycomprises the additional content.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein thecontent request is for content associated with a first context type, andwherein the first context definition has the first context type, themethod further comprising: determining a second subset of the pluralityof events associated with a second context definition having the firstcontext type; determining a second plurality of fields specified in thesecond context definition; and determining, for events in the secondsubset, field values of one or more fields specified in the secondcontext definition, wherein the content comprises the field values ofthe one or more fields specified in the first context definition and thefield values of the one or more fields specified in the second contextdefinition.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the requested contentcomprises field values of a particular field of the plurality of fieldsspecified in the first context definition, the method furthercomprising: determining the field values of the particular field fromthe first subset of the plurality of events wherein the contentcomprises the field values of the particular field.
 6. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the requested content comprises most common fieldvalues, the method further comprising: determining one or more mostcommon field values from the field values of the one or more fieldsspecified in the first context definition, wherein the content comprisesthe one or more most common field values.
 7. The method of claim 1,wherein the requested content comprises one or more event contexts, themethod further comprising: determining an event context for each eventin the first subset, each event context from events in the first subsetcomprising a list of key value pairs, wherein keys in the listcorrespond to the fields specified in the first context definition andvalues in the list correspond to the field values associated with thefields, and wherein the content comprises at least one determined eventcontext.
 8. The method of claim 7, wherein the requested contentcomprises a most common event context, the method further comprising:determining a first plurality instances of a first event context,wherein the first plurality of instances of the first event contextcomprise matching fields and matching field values; determining a firstnumber of instances in the first plurality of instances of the firstevent context; determining a second plurality instances of a secondevent context, wherein the second plurality of instances of the secondevent context comprise matching fields and matching field values;determining a second number of instances in the second plurality ofinstances of the first event context; determining that the first numberis greater than the second number; and determining that the first eventcontext is the most common event context, wherein the content comprisesthe first event context.
 9. The method of claim 7, wherein the requestedcontent comprises a most relevant event context, the method furthercomprising: determining a particular event context having a highestnumber of matching instances that are within a threshold distance intime from the time period; and determining that the event context is themost relevant event context, wherein the content comprises theparticular event context.
 10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:determining a source type associated with the service; determining aresponse format based on the source type; and formatting the response tocorrespond to the response format.
 11. A computing device comprising: amemory; and a processing device operatively coupled to the memory,wherein the processing device is to: receive a query from a service, thequery comprising a first field value, a time period and a contentrequest; perform a first search of a data store using the first fieldvalue to identify a plurality of events having the time period and atleast one field that comprises the first field value; determine a firstsubset of the plurality of events associated with a first contextdefinition; determine a plurality of fields specified in the firstcontext definition; determine, for events in the first subset, fieldvalues of one or more fields specified in the first context definition;determine, from the field values of the one or more fields specified inthe first context definition, content that satisfies the contentrequest; and generate a response to the query that comprises thecontent.
 12. The computing device of claim 11, wherein the processingdevice is further to: determine a first source type associated with thefirst subset of the plurality of events; and determine that the firstsource type is associated with the first context definition, wherein thefirst context definition identifies the first plurality of fields thatare pertinent to context of a particular event.
 13. The computing deviceof claim 11, wherein the first context definition has a first contexttype, and wherein the processing device is further to: determine asecond subset of the plurality of events associated with a secondcontext definition having a second context type; determine a secondplurality of fields specified in the second context definition;determine, for events in the second subset, field values of one or morefields specified in the second context definition; and determine, fromthe field values of the one or more fields specified in the secondcontext definition, additional content that satisfies the contentrequest, wherein the response to the query comprises the additionalcontent.
 14. The computing device of claim 11, wherein the contentrequest is for content associated with a first context type, and whereinthe first context definition has the first context type, and wherein theprocessing device is further to: determine a second subset of theplurality of events associated with a second context definition havingthe first context type; determine a second plurality of fields specifiedin the second context definition; and determine, for events in thesecond subset, field values of one or more fields specified in thesecond context definition, wherein the content comprises the fieldvalues of the one or more fields specified in the first contextdefinition and the field values of the one or more fields specified inthe second context definition.
 15. The computing device of claim 11,wherein the requested content comprises field values of a particularfield of the plurality of fields specified in the first contextdefinition, and wherein the processing device is further to: determiningthe field values of the particular field from the first subset of theplurality of events wherein the content comprises the field values ofthe particular field.
 16. The computing device of claim 11, wherein therequested content comprises most common field values, and wherein theprocessing device is further to: determining one or more most commonfield values from the field values of the one or more fields specifiedin the first context definition, wherein the content comprises the oneor more most common field values.
 17. The computing device of claim 11,wherein the requested content comprises one or more event contexts, andwherein the processing device is further to: determine an event contextfor each event in the first subset, each event context from events inthe first subset comprising a list of key value pairs, wherein keys inthe list correspond to the fields specified in the first contextdefinition and values in the list correspond to the field valuesassociated with the fields, and wherein the content comprises at leastone determined event context.
 18. The computing device of claim 17,wherein the requested content comprises a most common event context, andwherein the processing device is further to: determine a first pluralityinstances of a first event context, wherein the first plurality ofinstances of the first event context comprise matching fields andmatching field values; determine a first number of instances in thefirst plurality of instances of the first event context; determine asecond plurality instances of a second event context, wherein the secondplurality of instances of the second event context comprise matchingfields and matching field values; determine a second number of instancesin the second plurality of instances of the first event context;determine that the first number is greater than the second number; anddetermine that the first event context is the most common event context,wherein the content comprises the first event context.
 19. The computingdevice of claim 17, wherein the requested content comprises a mostrelevant event context, and wherein the processing device is further to:determine a particular event context having a highest number of matchinginstances that are within a threshold distance in time from the timeperiod; and determine that the event context is the most relevant eventcontext, wherein the content comprises the particular event context. 20.The computing device of claim 11, wherein the processing device isfurther to: determine a source type associated with the service;determine a response format based on the source type; and format theresponse to correspond to the response format.
 21. A computer readablestorage medium comprising instructions that, when executed by aprocessing device, cause the processing device to perform operationscomprising: receiving a query from a service, the query comprising afirst field value, a time period and a content request; performing, bythe processing device, a first search of a data store using the firstfield value to identify a plurality of events having the time period andat least one field that comprises the first field value; determining, bythe processing device, a first subset of the plurality of eventsassociated with a first context definition; determining a plurality offields specified in the first context definition; determining, forevents in the first subset, field values of one or more fields specifiedin the first context definition; determining, from the field values ofthe one or more fields specified in the first context definition,content that satisfies the content request; and generating a response tothe query that comprises the content.